Development of a breastfeeding support program at Naval Hospital Sigonella, Italy

The Naval Hospital (NH) Sigonella, which contains a level one nursery, cares for prenatal patients in an isolated military community. Many of the traditional support systems available to breastfeeding mothers in the United States, such as Le Leche League, are unavailable in this setting. Some prenatal patients in this setting who have had the desire to breastfeed have failed to do so because they were not offered a structured educational support system that encouraged and monitored their breastfeeding efforts. This prompted the pediatric nurse, functioning as breastfeeding counselor nurse at NH Sigonella, to develop a breastfeeding support program. The goal of the program is to educate new mothers about breastfeeding and to encourage them to initiate and continue breastfeeding for at least 5 to 6 months. These goals are in line with the Healthy People 2000 (1990) objectives, which are to increase to at least 75% the proportion of mothers who breastfeed their babies in the early postpartum period and to at least 50% the proportion of those who continue breastfeeding until their babies are 5 to 6 months old. At delivery, the breastfeeding counselor meets individually with each new mother who expresses the desire to breastfeed. During this visit, she observes and evaluates each mother's breastfeeding technique. Discharge follow-up via telephone is conducted weekly for 4 weeks and at 3 and 6 months postpartum. Data collection after 6 months revealed that 86.7% of all new mothers initiated breastfeeding and 51.4% of those mothers continued breastfeeding for 5 to 6 months. The Breastfeeding Counseling Support Program will enhance NH Sigonella's efforts in continuing to meeting the objectives of Healthy People 2000 and the Breast Feeding Hospital Initiative while providing the benefits of breastfeeding to mother and infant.