The Durham Digest
Breastfeed Durham
Special Edition
Infant Feeding in Emergencies

We hope that you and your families are safe and well amid the chaos brought on by last night's severe storm in Durham. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the widespread power outages, fallen trees, and challenges in accessing emergency assistance. In these trying times, we recognize the difficulties that may arise for lactating families. To provide support and resources, we are sending out this special edition of our newsletter to address the importance of inverted feeding during emergencies.

We understand that many in our community are facing challenges due to the loss of power and limited access to resources. For lactating parents, maintaining a steady milk supply and ensuring that your infant receives adequate nutrition may be an additional concern.

Please know that Breastfeed Durham is here to support you through this crisis, and we hope this special edition of our newsletter will be a helpful resource for you and your loved ones.

Stay safe and take care of each other.
What do parents need in an emergency?

In this newsletter, we hope to provide you with essential information, tips, and resources on how to maintain lactation during emergencies, and how to support lactating parents during this time. We understand that not everyone has the capacity to care for others at this moment, but together, as a community, we can help ease the challenges that lactating families face in the aftermath of this storm.

Some key points for Durham's Breastfeeding Family Friendly Community to consider as we support families during an emergency:

  • Keep families together.
    • Create a safe place for infant feeding that keeps families together.
    • Although it may feel good to feed and comfort a child, emergency workers and volunteers should ensure that families are NOT separated and provide support to parents so that parents can feed and comfort their children.
  • Reassure nursing parents.
    • Continuing to breastfeed is the best choice for feeding their infant and encourage parents to chest/breastfeed as often as the baby wants. It is clean, safe, and readily available.
    • Support breastfeeding families to continue to breastfeed as the safest feeding option; 
  • Help non-breastfeeding families with safe feeding options.
    • Distribute formula only to formula feeding parents rather than exclusively breastfeeding parents; 
    • Purchase ready-to-use formula as needed and ensure that workers are trained on assessing need.
  • Provide nourishment and clean water to the parents to help them stay hydrated and strong to care for their children.

Encourage parents who are both breastfeeding and bottle-feeding to increase breastfeeding during the emergency as the clean, safe, and readily-available feeding method.
Resources

Here are some resources to support breastfeeding and infant feeding policies and practices in emergencies:
Thank you to our financial partners!

This newsletter was made possible with the financial contributions of the Durham County Department of Public Health as part of the Improving Community Outcomes for Maternal and Child Health Grant and donors like you.
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Breastfeed Durham has received 3 years of conditional funding for Bernadette Greene to continue to serve in the role of Executive Director. The funding is conditional on Breastfeed Durham finding matching funds from other sources.
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