August is National Breastfeeding Month! Nearly 90% of families participating in FL MIECHV supported home visiting programs during pregnancy in 2017 initiated breastfeeding and more than one-third continued for six months or more. Here’s a great success story on how home visiting encourages and supports breastfeeding families!
Amy and Daniel Vaknin and their 2-year-old daughter, Skylar welcomed triplets, Ava, Avi and Ari into their family on April 28, 2015. Amy was very intentional about making breastfeeding a priority.
While While still pregnant, Amy committed to breastfeeding her triplets as long as possible. They enrolled in the Alachua MIECHV program on July 16th, 2015. Parent Educator, Shannon Brandt was very impressed with how committed Amy was to breast feeding her sweet babies.
“She was very organized with her feeding schedules and documented everything on a spread sheet.” “Her husband, friends and family were a wonderful support system for her.” Shannon supported Amy’s goal to breastfeed as long as possible, often completing home visits while mom was rotating the babies on her breasts or pumping.
“Many mothers struggle with the undertaking of breast-feeding a single child for 12 months, Amy succeeded at breastfeeding her triplets for 15 months!”
Shannon continued working with the family for the next three years. She was instrumental in tracking their development through the Ages and Stages Questionnaire and linked the family to services through Early Steps when it was identified that additional interventions were needed. It was a bitter sweet moment when the family successfully graduated from the PAT program. Shannon was thrilled to be able to re-connect with them to document this story.