Sunday, March 14, 2010

A cold wind blows...for breastfeeding!

The next CenteringPregnancy visit that I am co-facilitating is coming up next week. As always, I am really looking forward to it! One of the topics for this week is breastfeeding, and of course I am assigned to run that section. I was talking to the midwife who runs the group for ideas, and she said that in the past she's done a "Red Rover" style game - "Let anyone who's ever breastfed a baby come over", for example, and then ask those women what their experiences were - a fun way to get people talking.

Our room is very small, though, so I suggested "A Cold Wind Blows" using the same concept. In that game, there's a circle of chairs, with one less chair than people. The idea is that I'll say "A cold wind blows for everyone who's ever breastfed a baby" and then everyone who has breastfed has to get up and find a new chair - only one person is left standing. Then they get a question like "How did breastfeeding go?" and you can also ask people who you noticed get up and find a new seat. These women aren't hugely pregnant yet, so I'm hoping it won't be too crazy an idea, but we'll see!

I'm brainstorming ideas for "cold winds". Here are my ideas so far (with their Spanish translations, since this is a Spanish group):

Everyone who has ever:

- Breastfed a baby/Dado pecho a su bebe
If there are enough people who have breastfed, we can follow up with:
- Had pain from breastfeeding/Tenido dolor de dar pecho?
- Breastfed after going back to work/Seguido dando pecho despues de regresar al trabajo?
- Breastfed for a year or more/Dado pecho un año o mas?
- Had problems with making enough milk/Tenido problemas con producir suficiente leche?
- Gotten help for a breastfeeding problem/Recibido ayuda para resolver una problema con la lactancia?
All of these questions can be followed up with questions about what were problems/advantages/solutions, etc.

- Has a sister or friend who breastfed/Tenido una hermana o amiga que le dio pecho a su bebe?
Follow-up question: What did she tell you about breastfeeding/Que le ha dicho sobre dar el pecho? (Following discussion could go a lot of ways depending on response - also a way to elicit conversation about problems if we don't have enough people who breastfed in the group.)

- Is planning to buy a breast pump/Va a comprar una pompa para sacar la leche?
Follow-up question: When are you planning to use it, and for what/Cuando la va a usar, y para que?

- Heard something good about breastfeeding? Heard something bad?
Follow-up question: What did you hear? (More opportunities to talk about both benefits and problems!)


These questions may entail enough running-around time for moderately-pregnant women, and then we can move into just sitting and discussing! But does anybody have other ideas? (Or comments on my Spanish translations, imperfect as I'm sure they are.)

Note: in one randomized controlled trial, women who participated in CenteringPregnancy were significantly more likely to initiate breastfeeding than those who had been assigned to individual care (66.5% vs. 54.6%; odds ratio 1.73, confidence interval: 1.28-2.35). I'm hoping they used "A cold wind blows" in that trial too.

2 comments:

placenta sandwich said...

Whoa, I LOVE this idea! Seems like it could be helpful to strengthen a wide variety of positive norms that we typically try over and over again to "instill" in passive audiences with some didactic form of "education."

Discovering your blog a few weeks ago felt like running into a kindred self from a parallel universe - I almost majored in Spanish and anthropology in college (in the end I did something similar), am now working on an MPH, and have been considering training as a doula once I finally find some free time. (Bonus: my name rhymes with doula!) My calling is abortion care, but I value the whole spectrum of pregnancy care and parenting rights and helping women take back centrality in decisions about THEIR bodies...so, obviously, I think your blog is the shit!

Rebecca said...

You would probably love Centering then! It's really more about talking/sharing than formal teaching, and it's really great.

Have you done any abortion doula/support work? I'm very interested in doing that at some point. I hope you're able to do doula training at some point! It's a great experience. Thank you for the nice words about my blog!!