California Fights for Breastfeeding Support in Hospitals

Have you heard about California SB502? 
I hadn't either until yesterday, but it was signed by California Governor Brown on October 6th, 2011. 

It affects hospital protocol in regards to breastfeeding women, so I thought I'd pass along the information.  If you live outside of California, has your state enacted something similar.

State Bill #502 was written by Senator Fran Pavley and Senator Kevin De Leon, sponsored by California's WIC program, and is known as The Hospital Infant Feeding Protection Act.

Click here to read the fact sheet
Click here to read the full bill (it's not that long!)

Basically this bill is a step towards increasing the rates of exclusive breastfeeding (read: reducing the rate of supplementing/formula feeding) in California hospitals. The bill will go into affect January 2014, so staff has plenty of time to develop their policy, educate the perinatal staff and implement their new infant feeding policy.

SB 502 would require all general acute care hospitals in CA with a perinatal
unit to have an infant feeding policy that is clearly posted and applied to all infants in the unit. It also states that staff must be routinely reminded of the policy so that it doesn't fall by the wayside.

They also want the policy to be based on:

Baby Friendly USA

or the

Department of Public Health's Model Policies.

What prompted this bill:

The state of California leads the way in legislation supporting breastfeeding mothers.  There is legislation in place that allows breastfeeding in any public or private location, excuses breastfeeding women from jury duty obligations, and requires that the local departments of public health promote breastfeeding.  However, according to the CDC, “the hospital period is critical for mothers and babies to learn to breastfeed, and hospitals need to do more to support them."  While 90% of California new mothers plan to breastfeed, but only 56% are exclusively breastfeeding upon discharge from the hospital a few days later. 

Lets examine that statistic a little bit:
So out of 100 California women, 90 of them plan to breastfeed, but only 56 are breastfeeding their infant upon discharge.  If we assume that none of the 10 of moms that intended to formula feed changed their mind, this means that 34 women changed their feeding plan while at the hospital -  

That's a third of all women that deliver in California! 

This is a huge opportunity for hospitals to step up and assist these women in learning how to breastfeed, and it requires that all perinatal employees be educated about the options available to these mothers.

I think this is a great thing.
It helps to get staff on the same page and attempts to give each woman the support she needs while in a California hospital.

What are your thoughts?