Friday, August 6, 2010

Ready, Set, Lactate!

This week is World Breastfeeding Week, and as a big advocate of breastfeeding, I was excited to participate today in "The Big Latch On."

This morning, at 10:30 a.m., women gathered at more than 25 locations across Portland to breastfeed their children and, we hoped, break the world record for simultaneous breastfeeding. I had not known such a record existed!

The Big Latch On was organized in Portland to challenge The Big Latch On in New Zealand’s numbers- New Zealand recorded 1299 women simultaneously breastfeeding last year. But the event today was also about helping moms connect with one another and to celebrate Portlanders’ open attitudes toward public breastfeeding. Yay for Portland!

One of the venues was just a couple of miles from our house at the Andaluz Birth Center and when we rushed in this morning, almost late, the ten-second countdown to 10:30 began as we were getting seated. I latched Annalise on, and we were added to the count!

The largest number of simultaneously breastfeeding children at a single site was 3,738 in Manila, Philippines, in 2006. And the following year, organizers in the Philippines recorded more than 22,500 children breastfeeding simultaneously at 590 sites throughout the country. I'm excited to hear the results of Portland's Big Latch On.

Ready, set, lactate!


3 comments:

Valerie and Mercado Family said...

Awesome! Hardly anyone breastfeeds out here, and certainly not in public, but I do and I'm proud of it!

JENNILLE said...

You're funny. So what's up with the dairy and gluten free diet? Was Annalise allergic are, are you just doing breast feeding, no formals suppliment etc. what's up?

Jessica said...

We are back on dairy, which seemed to make no difference, but still off gluten for another few days before it's totally out of our systems. I think Annalise definitely has a sensitivity to it because she is sleeping much better. (Not through the night, but I digress...) I am going to take her in to the allergist to get herbloodwork done and see if there are any other mild allergies she might have that are a contributing factor to the sleep issues. Even mild allergies can manifest themselves that way.

Annalise eats regular foods and breastfeeds exclusively for her milk- no supplements. :)