Breastfeeding in Kagini
In Kagini, a neighbourhood in Abuja Metropolitan Area Council, AMAC, young women are learning to throw off inhibitions that stop them breastfeeding. The issue lies in allowing their infants nurse exclusively on breast milk for the first six months of their life, then add in supplementary foods for another six, before finally weaning their babies […]
In Kagini, a neighbourhood in Abuja Metropolitan Area Council, AMAC, young women are learning to throw off inhibitions that stop them breastfeeding.
The issue lies in allowing their infants nurse exclusively on breast milk for the first six months of their life, then add in supplementary foods for another six, before finally weaning their babies at age two.
The figures are gradually increasing. By 2008, the National Demographic Health Survey showed only 20% of children under age one were exclusively breastfed. Latest intermittent data shows 15% of all children get exclusive breastfeeding in Nigeria.
Proponents wonder why having their babies nurse exclusively at their breast isn’t coming as natural to mothers as the instinct does to animals.
“It is really becoming an issue,” says Chinomnso Ibe, nurse and midwife and founder of Traffina Foundation for Community Health, which convened hundreds of women at Kagini Health Centre last week in hopes of raising awareness about the benefits of putting a child to breast immediately after birth and keeping them there as long as possible.
“Most women just want to grab formula and feed their children. It is supposed to be instant—initiate breastfeeding immediately after childbirth.
“It is a challenge. Our mothers should know that if an animal can do it, why not mothers carrying the baby for nine months. This is just the best we can do for our babies till they grow.”
Several practices discourage women from exclusive breastfeeding, including lack of support from their husbands and families. Many more take on communal beliefs that insist the colostrum—the first milk after birth should be discarded before a baby can feed.
Prelacteal feeding—giving a baby something else other than breast milk first time—is prevalent in Nigeria; up to 79% in the northeast, says the latest demographic health survey.
The extent vanity plays to put infants away from breast is not known but is common.
Some women are concerned about their breasts sagging from breastfeeding, including those who have breast implants, says Ibe.
“So when they have a child, it becomes a problem. They can’t breastfeed.”
Their concern comes from wanting to look as good as their men want, but “it is ignorance,” says Rev Martins Okeme.
“The life of the baby is more important than the shape of the breast. After all, the breast is given by God for the benefit of the baby, not the man.”
He was only one of two men who accompanied their wives to Kagini Health Centre for breastfeeding awareness—and the awareness is growing among younger women supposedly more interested in how they look.
Precious Orhii, 22, gave birth to her daughter, now two months, at Kagini Health Centre. She’s practiced exclusive breastfeeding ever since hearing about it.
“Even my mother who gave birth to me told me to breastfeed up to six months, if I want this baby to be healthy,” she says.
“Since I gave birth to her, I have not experienced illness in her. When I went to Kubwa General Hospital [nearby], they couldn’t believe she was just two months old; they said she looked three months old.”
She didn’t consider a maternity leave before giving birth. The stay-at-home mum doesn’t go too far from her child, but when she does, she expresses milk into a feeding bottle for her daughter and still feels “as if I haven’t ever given birth, as if nothing came out of my body.”
Sarah Ugwu, 26, gets the unlikely support of her husband for exclusive breastfeeding, and it shows.
“My baby is healthy, very fat, good weight,” she says, proudly showing off her four-month-old infant.
Sticking to breast milk takes away cost of buying formula and the risk of using unsafe or contaminated foods for a baby, but the strong point is how the young one stays healthy and free of disease.
Joy Daniel didn’t have the option of breastfeeding when she took up care of her sister’s baby after her sister died in caesarean childbirth. An eligible nursing mother could not be found, and she’s been feeding the infant on soya milk and pap.
The concern is even stronger among women who are HIV-positive. They are in a support group run by Excellence and Friends Management Consult (EFMC), a host for maternal health young champions, initiated by the Institute of International Education at Harvard School of Public Health.
Among hundreds in the support group, many are concerned about breastfeeding.
“If a woman chooses not to breastfeed, she needs to ensure that what means she adopts is safe, affordable and feasible,” says Gladys Sule of EFMC, which runs focus groups to in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV and helping HIV-positive women manage their status.
“But we always recommend breastfeeding. If she chooses not to, and along the way cannot continue with the formula, or an in-law comes around and she wants to please them, so she breastfeeds for that moment, that might predispose the child to even higher risk [of contracting HIV].”
HIV-positive women can exclusively breastfeed six months, bring in supplements for the next six before stopping, the logic goes. The danger lies in mixing breast milk and formula supplements in the first six months when the baby’s stomach lining is still delicate and easily vulnerable to diarrhoea.
The last two demographic health surveys, five years apart, have shown a slight drop in the proportion of both stunted and underweight children in the country.
But proponents of breastfeeding the drop to be much more than slight.
The women at Kagini sing a song to remind them they have good breastmilk at their disposal, “always by my side,” as they learn the best position for a nursing infant—one mother and her baby at a time.