Best starts for babies featured during conference

Sandy Lake’s Leslie Crow is looking for more baby-friendly work environments after attending a recent conference in Thunder Bay about the subject.
“It’s normal to bring your child to work,” said Crow, who participated in the Oct. 18-19 Best Start Resource Centre 2010 Northern Conference in Thunder Bay. “If your baby needs breastfeeding while you are at work, I think that is something that needs to be put into place especially in our community because we don’t have a daycare.”
Crow said most of the young mothers in Sandy Lake do not work because they don’t have anywhere to keep their baby.
“Just like me, I have an eight-month-old (daughter) and she goes to a babysitter and I breastfeed her,” Crow said. “That would be very great if I could bring her to work.”
Crow said many mothers in her community use store-bought formula to feed their babies because it is more convenient.
“For me, I had my first baby when I was 18,” Crow said, explaining she was still in high school at the time about 11 years ago. “I went to school half a day because I still needed two credits. I was breastfeeding only, so I would run home during break time to go breastfeed my baby.”
Crow said her mother told her it was very important to breastfeed.
“Eleven years later, I only breastfeed my kids,” Crow said, explaining she believes breastfeeding has helped her babies, including her oldest. “I think my relationship with him is better because we had that time. He is never sick (and) he hasn’t had a serious illness ever in his life.”
About 150 people attended the conference, about 100 in person and about 50 over a videoconference and a webstream set up through K-Net.
The conference featured two presentations Oct. 18; First Nation perspectives on child development by Jaynane Burning-Fields from Six Nations and the breastfeeding update and BFI (Baby Friendly Initiative) - new indicators by Hiltrud Dawson and Hannele Dionisi.
Rainy River’s Annie Wilson described the birth of her only child during her keynote presentation on Aboriginal traditional teachings in prenatal and postpartum care to begin the second day of the conference, which featured five additional presentations.
“I started walking, four times I had to walk around that cabin,” Wilson said, explaining an Elder had told her to walk while the Elder gathered grass for her to lay on during the birth.
When she laid down on the grass, the birthing process started almost immediately.
“I could feel the water coming real fast and in that fast water I could feel something coming out. And then she yelled, ‘There he comes.’”
Wilson said the Elder told her afterwards that walking helps during the birth process, especially for those women who are having a difficult time.
“He is pretty strong right now,” Wilson said about her son. “He is a carpenter.” Wilson said her son ate the food that was provided by the Creator for Native people after he finished breastfeeding.
“We had to feed him wild food when he was growing up and we didn’t feed him anything like we eat today,” Wilson said. “We couldn’t buy anything, we had to have rabbit meat and fish and that’s the way he had to grow up.”
Wilson said First Nations people should try to go back to the traditional diet because many people are not healthy these days.
Other presentations during the conference covered such topics as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, support for children, environmental health, prenatal nutrition and food insecurity.