Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Breastfeeding online course

Photo Credit: Unsplash User Han Myo Htwe

Photo Credit: Unsplash User Han Myo Htwe

Best Start is Ontario’s Maternal newborn and Early Child Development Resource Centre. Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Breastfeeding has been designed to enable staff and volunteers, who work with prenatal women or new families, to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding”.

The course content includes:

  • Introduction

  • Lesson 1: Good Reasons to Breastfeed

  • Lesson 2: Supporting Women Before, During and After Pregnancy

  • Lesson 3: Barriers to Breastfeeding

  • Lesson 4: Breastfeeding Basics

  • Lesson 5: Informed Decision Making

  • Lesson 6: Protecting, Promoting and Supporting Breastfeeding

  • Lesson 7: includes a breastfeeding resource list (Ontario-based),

The course provides a printable Course Evaluation and Certificate once the lessons have been completed and the course quizzes have been completed at 80% or higher.

Best Start also offers a number of free, downloadable resources, including:

  • Learning from Stories: Breastfeeding Case Stories

    • Supporting Exclusive Breastfeeding

    • Breastfeeding Promotion to Increase Awareness and Confidence

    • Prenatal Breastfeeding Education

    • Breastfeeding Education for Health Care Providers

    • Breastfeeding and Younger Women

  • My Breastfeeding Guide – Booklet

    • Available in PDF in English, French, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified), Farsi, Gujarate, Hindi, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Urdu and Vietnamese

    • Available in high-resolution PDF in English and French

  • A manual on Developing and Sustaining Breastfeeding Peer-Support Programs

  • Breastfeeding for the Health and Future of Our Nation booklet created to support Aboriginal women with the art of breastfeeding, and using the Medicine Wheel to symbolize the balance needed to support breastfeeding women (available in PDF in English, Cree and Ojibway).

  • Breastfeeding Your Baby, Guidelines for Nursing Mothers, a small table-format teaching aid for providers working with pregnant or new mothers, designed with colourful graphics and minimal text to provide an at-a-glance look. It can be printed out for hanging on a fridge door.

    • Available in PDF in English, French, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified), Cree, Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Ojibway (Syllabics), Punjabi, Russian, Servian (Cyrillic) Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Urdu and Vietnamese.

  • Mixing Alcohol and Breastfeeding handout provides information for mothers and their partners to help them make an informed choice when it comes to drinking alcohol whilst breastfeeding. Available in PDF in English, French, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Cree, Hindi, Ojibway, Punjabi, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil and Urdu.

Jessica Campbell