As a midwife and a woman, I support Mothers choices. The choice to breast or formula feed, or a combination of these is completely up to the woman. I know the benefits and drawbacks of each, and hope that what I can give women is a balanced appraisal of the information to help them base their own decisions on. Antenatally, around 95% of mothers tell us they hope to breastfeed, and they do initiate this when baby arrives. By 3 months though, less than half of all babies are still exclusively breastfed. Many new Mums get home with things not going perfectly though. They reach out to breastfeeding helplines & centres, engage with lactation consultants, ask friends and post on social media groups and tell us, that they just needed more midwifery support to get a good start. Whereas formula feeding can be learned by reading a set of instructions, breastfeeding has many more variables and takes time and patience, and good support to get right. One of the hardest things for midwives to find enough time for is supporting Mum’s to establish breastfeeding while in hospital. All midwives have a solid foundation from university learning, and must maintain their breastfeeding knowledge with mandated learning throughout their career. We do know about breastfeeding, instinctive baby behaviour and feeding cues, positioning and attachment, strategies to overcome undersupply and oversupply, sore nipples, mastitis, etc. We want what women want, and most women want to breastfeed. This should be a national priority that’s supported by government healthcare policy. It’s not just the nutritional, bonding and cost effectiveness benefits for mothers and babies. Healthcare systems as a whole benefit from the long term good that breastfeeding does for immunity, preventing obesity and the emerging evidence about gut microbiomes is overwhelmingly positive for breastfed babies. The way things are though, we are so busy getting the time-critical, must-do tasks done breastfeeding support has slipped down the list. Imagine having to choose -between checking a babies blood sugar level that might be low, and might cause brain damage if it is; and helping a Mum get her baby to attach correctly which might take half an hour by which time your going to be really late with that blood sugar you must do on time – it’s just got to ease up. The pressure is enormous physically and mentally – both of what we must get done and of what we just can’t get to do. Every shift, prioritising and knowing if you just had a reasonable number or patients, you could do better! One of the ways we can make more time, and so mothers have a better chance of long term breastfeeding success is to change the rules that are behind how our workloads are allocated. The root cause of the problem is that babies aren’t recognised as patients when they are on the postnatal ward with Mum. So all the work and documentation we do for them isn’t even recognised or considered when staffing and allocations are done. It’s not the hospitals or the managers at fault, they’re following the federal rules, and trying to keep to their staffing budgets. It’s the rules that need to change. Like anything political, public awareness and public pressure is what induces action. Sign the petition, tell your friends and family. This absolutely can be changed, we can do better – if you join us our voice gets louder, if we change this things will get better. https://www.change.org/p/australia-s-newborns-should-be-counted-as-patients-there-are-zero-babies-in-australian-hospitals-that-don-t-receive-patient-care-health-minister?recruiter=33048993&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition Photo: NHS Start4Life