It’s no secret that motherhood isn’t exactly an easy ride, and for many, one of the first challenges they face is quite simply: how to feed their newborn baby. Despite it being a method strongly encouraged by health professionals, establishing breastfeeding is hard—and a recent Breastfeeding Survey by Lactamo to mark World Breastfeeding Week paints a pretty bleak picture about how mums really feel about breastfeeding and the support they receive.
Celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Lactamo
To raise awareness about how their product can help mothers on their breastfeeding journeys during World Breastfeeding Week, we got the lowdown on all-things Lactamo from founder Etta Watts-Russell, who had a tough time breastfeeding with her firstborn and felt like a failure, “when [she] was already at [her] most vulnerable—right at the start of motherhood.”
So, What is Lactamo?
Determined to empower mums with solutions and support after such a rocky start to her own breastfeeding journey, Etta launched Lactamo after 2 years of research and development. Lactamo is a super soft (and safe!) silicone ball, expertly designed by a team of experts to help with breastfeeding problems. Lactamo uses a patented combination of temperature, movement and compression to help with common breastfeeding problems like blocked milk ducts, engorgement, the let-down reflex and milk supply. Basically, it's a breastfeeding game-changer!
The Significance of World Breastfeeding Week
World Breastfeeding Week is run by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA)—a global network of individuals and organisations dedicated to the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding worldwide. The objectives of World Breastfeeding Week 2022 are to inform, anchor, engage and galvanize action in support of breastfeeding.
Etta considers World Breastfeeding Week to be a true celebration of the benefits of breastfeeding—and a celebration of mums the world over who breastfeed, whether for five minutes, five months or five years.
The Survey
In order to get a realistic picture of how breastfeeding is going in Australia, Lactamo conducted a survey of Australian women—and the results are eye-opening.
A whopping 92 per cent reported negative experiences as part of their breastfeeding journey, with 67 per cent of these being physical problems such as oversupply, undersupply, blocked ducts, engorgement and infection. Women listed endless negative experiences, and a jaw-dropping 49 per cent had had mastitis. On top of these struggles, women said they had “problems with returning to work while breastfeeding” (21 per cent), “issues with breastfeeding in public” (27 per cent), and “felt negatively judged about how long they breastfed for” (30 per cent). Phew—as if new mothers didn’t already have enough on their plate.
How Lactamo Can Help
Although the breastfeeding landscape in Australia is a flawed one, there is hope on the horizon. According to a recently conducted independent trial by the International Breastfeeding Journal, a whopping 100 per cent of women “reported that they would recommend Lactamo to other mothers to assist their lactation”. 100 per cent of participants in the trial also "felt that it was beneficial for their lactation" and the trial authors concluded that Lactamo is "a valuable aid for breastfeeding women".
Not a bad report for such a young, valuable, Aussie-founded business, we think you'll agree!
Read the full article here.
