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By Mandy, on July 15th, 2008
Lait D’Amour – making breastfeeding fashionable
Mandy Lelliott has a passion for making breastfeeding easier for mums. The mother of two from Surrey runs Lait d’Amour, with the aim of spreading the message that “breast is best”. She has created some handy products that are attractive and fun, and help mums deal with the practicalities of giving their baby a great start in life. Mandy explains, “Lait d’Amour is making breastfeeding fashionable and promoting breastfeeding awareness with the help of my products including Nursing Necklaces and Booby Reminder® bracelets.”
Mandy created Booby Reminder® bracelets to help mums remember which breast to feed from next. Alternating breasts ensures that baby gets a full feed, with both the thirst quenching fore milk and the creamy hind milk which is packed full of goodness and growth hormones. The attractive bracelets carry the text, ‘This Boob Next’, and can be personalised with your baby’s name. Simply swap the bracelet to the other side after you’ve fed, and you’ll know where to start for the next feed. Mandy says, “I created the Booby Reminder® bracelet and founded Lait d’Amour in 2005, to provide mums with great information about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding mums don’t get enough support and encouragement, and so I became an advocate.”
Lait d’Amour is run from Mandy’s home. She sells through her own online store and via eBay. Mandy comments, “It started as a hobby. Now my team and I spend many hours a week making up the products. I aim to send products out the next day, even if it means I’m up until 1am some nights.” As well as the Booby Reminder® bracelets, Mandy has created another best seller. She says, “Jingle Boobs necklaces are the most popular item on my site. Choose from a range of colours to match your outfits or appeal to a little one. Wear the necklace when you feed and the brightly coloured beads can entertain your little one. Choose black, white and red beads to stimulate their visual development, or chunky animals and jingly bells for fun. The hemp strung nursing necklaces have passed safety testing to BSEN 71-1:2OO5 clause 5.1 (toy standards) and reached 185N tension without breaking.”
Mandy has selected some excellent products like the Lilypadz breast pads to complement her own creations, making Lait d’Amour the place to shop for every mum who wants to breastfeed. Mandy says, “Breastfeeding has brought so much to my life and to my children’s lives and future health. I was never very confident but watching my children grow on my milk has brought out the best in me. As a result I want to share my ‘breast is best’ campaign with the world.” Visit Mandy’s eBay store, simply called Lait d’Amour, or check out her own website, http://www.laitdamour.eu/
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By Lisa Lactivist, on July 9th, 2008
What started your breastfeeding campaigning career?
I am very privileged to work for Baby Milk Action as Campaigns and Networking Coordinator. It is one of the best jobs in the world, and one of the worst. The best because knowing what companies do on the ground and
behind the scenes, doesn’t just make me angry, it provides me with the information to help design and deliver campaigns to stop the corrupt practices of the baby food companies. It is one of the worst jobs because it brings home what people will do for greed.
What is Baby Milk Action?
Baby Milk Action is a non-profit organisation which aims to save lives and to end the avoidable suffering caused by inappropriate infant feeding. Baby Milk Action works within a global network to strengthen independent, transparent and effective controls on the marketing of the baby feeding industry.
The global network is called IBFAN (the International Baby Food Action Network) a network of over 200 citizens groups in more than 100 countries.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 1.5 million infants die around the world every year because they are not breastfed. Where water is unsafe a bottle-fed child is up to 25 times more likely to die as a result of diarrhoea than a breastfed child. That is why a marketing code was introduced in 1981 to regulate the marketing of breastmilk substitutes. Companies continue to violate its provisions.
Baby Milk Action is not anti-baby milk. Our work protects all mothers and infants from irresponsbile marketing.
What do you mean by “irresponsible marketing?”
Company promotion exploits the difficulties some mothers have with breastfeeding, presenting formula as the solution for ‘lack of milk’ or ‘hungrier babies’ when in reality very few mothers are physically unable to breastfeed, if they receive support when they experience problems. However, too often that support is lacking and the very real difficulties some mothers experience are not overcome. For example, if the infant is not correctly positioned, milk production is not stimulated, nipples can become cracked and mastitis can develop. Health workers need training and the patience to help, but themselves are the target of aggressive marketing by baby food companies.
- Support is needed for mothers who have difficulty breastfeeding.
- Formula, correctly labelled, and with the risks to health reduced as far as possible, needs to be available for when it is necessary.
- Mothers have the right to receive correct information free from commercial pressure.
This is what we are working for, but it is not the situation in many countries. During National Breastfeeding Awareness Week in the UK in 2004 the Department of Health published the results of its own survey with the title ‘Myths that stop mothers giving their infants the best start in life’ highlighting that 34% of mothers falsely believe that formula is the same or nearly the same as breastmilk. You have only to look at company materials and product labels to see how this and other ‘myths’ are propogated.
Tell me about the Nestlé Boycott
Our best known campaign is probably the Nestlé boycott. Nestlé is singled out for special attention because evidence shows it is the worst of the baby food companies. We monitor what is happening on the ground with our partners in the International Baby Food Action Network. You can see monitoring reports on our website.
The boycott is a great campaign. If you want to do something to stop this malpractice, you can. Stop buying Nestlé products. We focus on Nescafé, so if you cant give up the chocolate and cereals concentrate on that. But the more we can hit Nestlé profits the more likely it is to stop its aggressive marketing. Were not asking it to stop selling formula, just to market it responsibly. That means in accordance with marketing requirements adopted by the World Health Assembly, which is a United Nations organisation responsible for setting health policy. It is made up of the health ministries of the worlds governments.
How can I find out more?
How can I help?
Become a member! Baby Milk Action is an independent non-profit organisation which aims to save infant lives and to end the avoidable suffering caused by inappropriate infant feeding. Without members they would not be able to operate. You can become a member of send a donation via the on-line Virtual Shop (the shop also gives details of how to join by mail, phone or fax).
By Lisa Lactivist, on July 9th, 2008
Who we are
We are Jo and Amie, two ambitious mothers equally passionate about the strong need to reclaim a breastfeeding culture within our society.
Why we are taking the step?
To take Infant nutrition to another level!
Information supplied by Physicians, Health Professionals and also the Government supporting breastfeeding and therefore infant nutrition is highly informative but unless you have a science degree behind you like Jo and myself, and even then, this information can at times be daunting, confusing and even tedious to take in, particularly for busy mums and the young mums. Hardly bedtime reading. We feel they are missing out on the information-based support they need to encourage them to breastfeed, and that support has got to come from everyday sources. Once upon a time it would have been handed down through generations of mothers, but now it is alarming that most people wouldn’t even question whether ‘formula’ is any good or not. Blinded by some ‘science’ and in desperate need of real information we as a society have dumbly and routinely accepted a bum deal when it comes to feeding our babies. We need to take and disseminate the right bits of info in the right way to reach the people who would most benefit. Are we going to change society overnight? No, but at least we can apply some creative thinking to the problem and fight back with some of those very insights the formula giants have exploited for so very long.
To challenge the current media portrayal of breastfeeding!
Have any of you ever noticed a TV ad or campaign [in England or Wales - Scotland is way ahead in this respect] in the past or present promoting breastfeeding; the goodness of human milk and the essential nutrients it provides for an infant’s development and growth? No! Neither have we! Many TV ads choose to focus on the goodness of cow’s milk instead – how is it that milk from a cow – an entirely different species – achieves honour over human milk with regards to human infant nutrition? This misconception by society, combined with wily and heavyweight advertising by artificial baby milk manufacturers, is what has greatly inspired us to take action and make a change. Breastfeeding has a naff image. The Government isn’t doing much above-the-line work to change that either, so someone has to.
How we propose to make a change
We are in the process of creating a bespoke and cutting edge media-lab-resource centre. Collaborating with the information and media that are already out there and make the pro breastfeeding message more attractive, friendly, creative and fun!
We hope that it targets every day mums, young mums and their families and build a bridge between them and the professionals too, as well as all the long established support organisations made up of volunteers and concerned parties who struggle on limited resources and zero marketing budget. Who’s got time to sell the concept of good infant nutrition to the very people who need it when they are themselves in the front line of providing support? We ourselves could have trained to become breastfeeding counsellors, for instance, but we feel strongly that it would be smarter to use our skills and passions to their best advantage; to support those on the front line with our own business, media, creative and science backgrounds, and of course breastfeeding and parenting insight.
For more information about Milk of Human Kindness contact jo@milkofhumankindness.org.uk or amie@milkofhumankindness.org.uk
www.squidoo.com/milkofhumankindness
By Lisa Lactivist, on July 9th, 2008
Stella Onions with her children speaking to David Kidney
Where are you from?
Manchester & Shropshire
Why are you passionate about breastfeeding?
I always assumed that because breastfeeding was natural, it would be easy. How wrong I was! After giving birth to my daughter I came home and apart from the community midwife and my husband, after work, had no support at all. No family living in the UK. I really struggled to breastfeed, but I was fiercely determined. Although the midwife assured me my latch was fine, my daughter started losing weight and my nipples were shredded! I was advised that my daughter was using me as a dummy and that she was starving!
With blood pouring down the front of my T-shirt I relented and gave her a bottle of formula and a dummy. However, it didn’t feel right to me and I started expressing when I could. After a few days, I was able to give her a bottle of ebm and able to tip the formula into the bin where it belonged!
My nipples gradually healed and somewhere between week 4 and 5, we had it sorted between us. DD was gaining weight beautifully, my nipples had healed and we were set to get to 6 months. A week later my father died suddenly and I was able to scoop my dd up and jump on a plane to be with my mum in South Africa. I don’t think I could have contemplated doing this if I was formula feeding. At six weeks old, how many bottles would you have to carry for a 24 hour door to door trip on 3 different planes? Travelling on my own with my tiny baby really made me realise how portable breastfed babies are. I can highly recommend it.
Hindsight, of course, is a wonderful thing and now that I know a little more about breastfeeding, it is obvious that the latch was not fine and just a simple adjustment would probably have sorted it out. Although it was only a few weeks at times you imagine it will always be like that. I subsequently nursed my daughter right through my next pregnancy and have been tandem nursing for nearly 2 ½ years now.
The more I find out about the dangers of formula feeding, the more I realise that it is only marketing hype that makes formula out to be a ‘good guy’, when really it can be dangerous and should only be used when all else really has failed. I fear that in the future, people will ask why they weren’t told the whole truth about formula and it’s potential dangers.
I could go on, but Moomum has said enough is enough.
Best moment of breastfeeding campaigning
Breastfeeding my son live on air on the Lorraine Kelly show
What makes you happy?
Chocolate, breastfeeding, chocolate, playing with my children, chocolate,
red wine, chocolate….
What makes you angry?
People who make assumptions and label people / things without knowing anything about them / the subject and lack of chocolate!
What are you working on right now?
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