On Saturday, August 4, at 10:30 am thousands of nursing women and their babies across the United States will gather in their own communities to take part in the Big Latch On, America’s first synchronized nursing event in multiple locations.
Locally, the Big Latch On will take place on August 4 at 10:30am in the first floor conference room at Jefferson Memorial Hospital. This is the second year that Jefferson Memorial Hospital has participated in the event. Tours of the hospital’s obstetrics unit will be offered following the event.
The first record for a single location was from Berkeley, CA USA in 2002 where 1,130 mothers breastfed simultaneously. The international record for one location is 3,738 mothers held by the Philippines in 2006. Since then, there have been several coordinated international events and in October 2010, 9,826 nursing mothers were recorded at 325 sites in 16 countries.
The Big Latch On is originally from New Zealand. It was introduced to Portland, Oregon in 2010 by Joanne Edwards as a celebration for World Breastfeeding Week. During the same week Annie Brown, a La Leche League Leader from Connecticut organized a simultaneous breastfeeding event in her home state.
Breastfeeding contributes to the normal growth and development of babies, and babies who are not breastfed are at increased risk of infant morbidity and mortality, adult obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and premenopausal breast cancer and ovarian cancer (both mom and baby.)
The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months of a baby’s life to optimize these benefits, continuing to breastfeed for 2 years and as long thereafter as is mutually desired by mother and baby.
For more information, visit www.lllusa.org/wbw/BigLatchOn.php or www.biglatchon.org.
