Tower Hamlets the Breastfeeding Capital of England
With breastfeeding rates that high do the mothers of Tower Hamlet’s know a secret the rest of womankind just didn’t get let into?
“No way do we try and push breastfeeding on mums that don’t want it.” Joy Hasting Baby Feeding Service Manager at Barts Health NHS Trust, explains from behind her desk in the rather small, rather busy, breastfeeding office at the Royal London Hospital. “Practically 90 per cent of our mums start off wanting to breastfeed so we concentrate on those mums, helping them to breastfeed.” she continues.
90 per cent sounds like a large number of pregnant mothers wanting to breastfeed especially when you consider that according to new figures from Public Health England (PHE) only just over 40% are still breastfeeding after 6 – 8 weeks. However, in Tower Hamlets, East London the area that the Baby Feeding Service from the Royal London Hospital serves, 8 in 10 mums are pushing past that 6 – 8 week mark and beyond.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that mothers should breastfeed babies exclusively for six months and then once baby starts eating solids supplementary breastfeeding is suggested. These new statistics from PHE show numbers of mothers doing this are dropping suggesting that this messaging from the NHS Start4Life campaign, the WHO, midwives, and health visitors is not making any difference.
Never the less this advice is being given to all mothers nationwide, so what is it that makes Tower Hamlets essentially the breastfeeding capital of England? Many new mums elsewhere will tell you they tried breastfeeding and it just didn’t work out for them. With breastfeeding rates that high do the mothers of Tower Hamlet’s know a secret the rest of womankind just didn’t get let into?
Far from being a secret most new mothers seem to be aware of the benefits of breastfeeding so perhaps the message is getting through, despite not always being heeded. “It was my preference as I believed it would strengthen my bond with baby and also provide better nutrition and boost their immune system,” says Tashya a slightly nervous new mother living in Tower Hamlets.
Tashya is quick to add “Not that I ruled out formula completely. A fed baby is best, as a friend told me.” A sentiment shared by many people, after all when you’ve tried your best to breastfeed and it just isn’t working it may be time to hit the bottle as it were.
Laura Palfreeman a first time mum from the borough of Brent did exactly that and bottle-fed her baby. She did not receive breastfeeding support at all “The health visitor kept saying you’re doing fine, but I knew I wasn’t” she confessed, explaining that if she had the support she could have breastfed for longer, but eventually gave up at 6 weeks. “The plan was always to breastfeed,” she added sadly.
Back in tower hamlets, they have various different organisations, pockets of support. The main support is given by the tower hamlets baby feeding service, who have eight full-time baby feeding specialists. They are also peer supporters, mothers who have all breastfed. The support starts during pregnancy with classes, continues in the hospital after the baby is born and is then carried into the community and the home. Home visits take up the majority of the baby feeding services time. Their facebook page is optimistically titled ‘Tower Hamlet’s babies are born to breastfeed’.
Questionably all babies are ‘born to breastfeed’ even if in other boroughs mothers are not living up to that mantra. The reality is it’s a hard one to live up to. Tashya’s little one is four months old and still being breastfed which she accredits in a large part to the baby feeding services in Tower Hamlets. “I saw members of the feeding service in hospital and they visited me at home. I had also been to a workshop prior to giving birth. As I had some complications with baby weight gain in the first week, they were incredibly helpful in enabling me to continue breastfeeding my baby.”
Tower Hamlet’s mothers seem to have won the postcode lottery in the way of baby feeding services. As unfair as that is on mothers elsewhere the reason for their vast services gives hope to other boroughs. Hastings clarifies the situation “So I think there is help in the community in other areas but perhaps not as well funded as us and that’s because Tower Hamlet’s public health see breastfeeding as a high priority.” The suggestion is that other boroughs public health could follow in their footsteps and boost their breastfeeding rates.
In Dr. Claire Ingham’s opinion, the problem of a lack of breastfeeding is cultural “Breastfeeding is a learned skill that we are poorly taught.” she explains “Poor preparation is also cultural. We don’t live in a breastfeeding culture” It is true that western women are not always prepared to breastfeed because they have the luxury of other options.
Hastings seems to agree with the cultural aspects of the situation “In this area, we have nearly 55 – 60 per cent of mothers who are of Bangladeshi origin so the vast majority expect that they will breastfeed.” she says. In fact, Tower Hamlets have the largest Bangladeshi population in England accounting for over 32 per cent of the borough’s population way above the average of 3 per cent.
It’s not just ethnic origin that could be having an effect on breastfeeding figures. As well as being a diverse borough Tower Hamlets is also a poor borough with higher than average unemployment rates. Meaning more mums are staying at home. Tashya admits “Breastfeeding is also a lot easier and cheaper, once you get the hang of it.” With the incentive of saving up to £60 a month on unbrought formula milk, why wouldn’t the borough’s mothers want to breastfeed?
Tower Hamlets is not the only borough to offer breastfeeding services but it may well be that other areas offering similar services are wasting their time. Who is the first person you go to for advice on child-rearing, your midwife, the health visitor, your doctor or more than likely your own mother. If your mother didn’t breastfeed then are you less likely to? Carmel Lloyd Head of education at the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) believes so. “Low breastfeeding rates in parts of the UK unfortunately indicate a much bigger social and cultural problem that needs to be tackled. There are some areas where many generations of women haven’t been given the example of breastfeeding,” she said.
Knowsley, Merseyside was highlighted in the PHE statistics as being the least likely to breastfeed their babies. As a white working-class area, this was no surprise to Hastings who said: “In the north of England there’s quite a high white working class population and they’re less likely to breastfeed, they come from families where they were bottle fed and its gone on for a couple of generations. So there are areas in the country where if you mention breastfeeding the pregnant mum or the new mum will go ‘oh no I don’t want to do that go away! I don’t want to talk about that’.”
The same repulsion or horror is not a sentiment found amongst the mothers of Tower Hamlets and Hastings notes that most of their mothers are willing to give it a go “You do get the occasional mother that doesn’t want to but their not sort of repulsed by it they are quite happy to give it a try.” Perhaps the borough being Unicef Baby Friendly accredited helps. Which means everyone mothers come into contact with are trained in helping to breastfeed – right down to the GP surgeries receptionist.
Subsequently what is being seen in Tower Hamlets is the rebirth of a culture of breastfeeding which goes beyond simply being offered services to help to breastfeed and into seeing breastfeeding as the normal thing to do, and not just the natural one.