Support with infant feeding is offered to all new families as part of the universal services provided by your midwives and health visitors.
For all parents with any concerns about breastfeeding, either during your pregnancy or once your baby is born, you can contact your health care provider for a referral to the Infant Feeding Specialist Team, where you can receive specialist support from one of the four fully trained Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs) who work across maternity, neonatal and health visiting services.
Depending on your individual needs, there are lots of other services offering support with infant feeding for all families living on the Fylde Coast, which are listed below with their websites.
If your baby is admitted to the Neonatal Unit (NNU) at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, your family will receive specialist individual support with infant feeding. A specialist Lactation Consultant and Nursery Nurse for infant feeding are based on the Neonatal Unit. There is a milk room for sterilising equipment and a fridge and freezer to store expressed breast milk. The NNU will also be able to loan you a hospital grade breast pump.
The Anya app is free to download and use free of charge for all residents of Blackpool and Lancashire. This app provides information and support on a vast array of topics across the antenatal and postnatal period, conveniently in your mobile phone.
It contains a comprehensive selection of articles, videos, webinars and interactive 3D animations, antenatal and postnatal programmes and the Anya AI virtual companion, as well as access to midwife, health visitor and infant feeding specialists 1:1 in the AI chat and in online drop ins.
It is a useful tool to use during pregnancy in preparation for parenthood, once your baby is born and well into infancy, with any questions you may have or challenges you may face.
Find out more: Anya
First Steps Nutrition Trust work for a future where the health of mums to be, infants and young children is better protected, promoted and supported through ensuring that their food and nutrition needs and challenges are given due attention in policy and practice. They seek to achieve this through:
- Providing conflict of interest-free, evidence-based, practical information on food/nutrition/feeding in the early years to health workers (and early years professionals); and
- Influencing policies which enable families to put into practice the advice given to them by health workers (and early years professionals, including through undertaking research).
For further information visit the website: First Steps Nutrition Trust
Baby Steps - Antenatal/Postnatal programme
Welcoming your baby into the world can be both exciting and challenging. Baby Steps is your antenatal class in Blackpool. It’s completely free. It is really friendly -and really relaxed and aims to help parents-to-be or carers prepare for life with their new baby/babies.
The programme provides friendly and inclusive group sessions. It’s a chance for you to meet other families who are due around the same time as you, so you can celebrate your pregnancies together every week. It’s there to help you find out about your pregnancy and when your baby comes – and because it’s delivered by a Health Visitor, Midwife and Family Engagement Worker – they can answer your questions as well as provide you with information and support during the pregnancy and through the early parenting journey after your baby/babies arrives.
The sessions cover:
- Baby’s development, both inside and outside of the womb.
- Building a relationship with your unborn baby and continuing that relationship once your baby is born.
- Caring for a baby and your baby’s development.
- Stages of labour, pain relief and delivery – where possible this is facilitated by a local midwife during a Baby Steps session, or parents are offered an alternative one-off session that usually takes place at the local hospital.
- Feeding your baby safely, whether you choose to breastfeed, feed your baby with expressed breast milk, or bottle/formula feed.
The group sessions usually start between the 26th and the 30th weeks of pregnancy. There are 9 weeks in total, so 6 whilst you are still pregnant - and then 3 will be after your baby/babies are here. You can bring your newborn baby to these 3 meetings.
Midwifery Health Trainers or your Midwife can refer you to Baby Steps, or you can self-refer.
You can access more information on the Baby Steps.
Start for Life and Blackpool Family Hubs
Blackpool Council supports the Start for Life campaign. This provides trusted NHS health advice to parents through its Family Hubs in North, Central and South Blackpool.
The Family Hubs offer a range of services and activities to support parents to be, children and families in the first critical 1,001 days of a child’s life – from conception right through to two years old.
You can access the Family Hubs through the Better Start website here.
Visit this website to find:
- information and advice on how to build a strong relationship with your baby.
- advice on key topics such as breastfeeding, introducing solids, the home learning environment and parent-infant relationships.
- access to midwife appointments and health visitor drop-ins.
- helpful leaflets on specific topics of concern to parents.
- support tools for parents, including the personalised Start for Life email programme, which can be accessed at home in a range of different languages.
The following leaflets on infant feeding are useful:
- ‘Off to the best start’ - which provides useful information on the value of breast milk and top tips of how to get breastfeeding off to a good start.
- ‘Time to start solid foods’ - which provides easy-to-read information on the best time to start weaning and how to start weaning your baby onto solid foods.
More information on infant feeding can be accessed on Feeding your baby - Start for Life.
Henry - Infant feeding support
HENRY is an organisation that offers infant feeding information and support to families in Blackpool. At HENRY, they believe that childhood experiences last a lifetime, and every child deserves the best possible start in life. Infant feeding plays a major part in giving children a good start.
HENRY can support parents-to-be, parents and carers with infant feeding for young babies and children. It offers specialist breastfeeding support, and guidance on breastfeeding, expressing, bottle/formula feeding and starting solids as well as optimal parent-infant relationship building and responsive infant feeding.
HENRY provides workshops on infant feeding for parents-to-be and parents.
They attend the Women’s and Children’s Unit at Blackpool Hospital to provide feeding support to new parents on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons and Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
They can arrange individual follow-up calls and one-to-one feeding support at home.
In addition, they offer community-based drop-in sessions and support for parents and their infants in the family hubs across Blackpool. They also have volunteers who can support families.
They also offer a Starting Solids workshop for babies coming up to the age of 6 months.
HENRY has an infant feeding helpline (01253 746788) staffed Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, and a website, which can be accessed here.
You can also visit their Facebook page with regular updates of workshops and drop-sessions here.
Lancashire Family Hubs Network and Infant feeding support
If you live in Fylde or Wyre, you can find support for yourself and your family from local services through the Lancashire Family Hubs Network. The local Family Hubs offer support for all stages of family life with children, from pregnancy through to 19 years of age, or 25 for those with special educational needs or disabilities.
Support is available both in person and online, and the Hubs work together with partner organisations such as the NHS and schools. This allows them to provide you with the help you need without having to repeat yourself to lots of different people.
Lancashire County Council (LCC) promotes and supports breastfeeding through the Hub network, but it also offers feeding support if you choose to bottle/formula feed. It is a children and family well-being service supported by Health Visitors and Midwives, who provide clinic appointments and antenatal classes in person.
You can find more information on their website: Lancashire Family Hubs Network.
Bump, Birth and Beyond (BBB) - offers infant feeding support in antenatal classes for Fylde and Wyre families
Welcoming your baby into the world can be exciting but also challenging, and BBB aims to provide you with information and support to cope with new experiences. BBB is a perinatal educational programme which aims to help parents-to-be or carers prepare for life with their new baby/babies.
The programme provides friendly and inclusive group sessions that are run by Midwives, Midwifery Health Trainers, Health Visitors and Family Hub staff. They offer information and support during the pregnancy and through the early parenting journey after baby arrives. They are also a good way to meet other parents-to-be at a similar stage of pregnancy.
Within the sessions, there will be presentations on building a relationship with your unborn baby and continuing that responsive relationship once your baby is born.
The sessions cover topics such as:
- challenges in pregnancy.
- stages of labour, pain relief and the birth.
- building a relationship with your unborn baby and continuing that relationship once your baby is born.
- planning safe sleeping arrangements.
- feeding your baby safely, whether you choose to breastfeed, feed your baby with expressed breast milk, or bottle/formula feed.
- caring for a baby, including coping with a crying baby, nappy changing and bathing.
- learning about your baby’s development.
There are group sessions that usually start between the 26th and the 30th week of pregnancy. Please ask your named Midwife to refer you if you would like to book onto these classes.
You can find more information on BBB here.
NCT support for infant feeding journeys
The NCT is a charity that works to provide evidence-based information and empower families. They are commissioned by Lancashire County Council to deliver support across Lancashire through a network of trained peer supporters. The infant feeding peer supporters are mothers, who have themselves given breastmilk, and have completed OCN-accredited training to provide free parent-to-parent support, first-line help with feeding and signposting to local services.
NCT provides confidential infant feeding support in hospitals and free face to face support via groups and home visits as well as virtual support through phone calls and a closed Facebook group.
NCT’s priority is to ensure that all parents receive the information and support they need to feed their babies in the way that they want to and that parents have positive feedback experiences.
NCT run a local helpline for Lancashire via 0208 7529025 and families can also access the national helpline: 0300 330 0700
Accessing local support services can make all the difference to your infant feeding experience.
You can find more information about accessing NCT infant feeding support here.
The National Breastfeeding Helpline is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, offering friendly, evidence based breastfeeding support and information to anyone in the UK who needs it. The National Breastfeeding Helpline number is 0300 100 0212.
For more information, click here National Breastfeeding Helpline
