Katrien Nauwelaerts works as a history-teacher since 2000 and graduated as a prehistoric archaeologist in 2005. She's the mother of three breastfed children and the administrator of the Dutch breastfeeding-website Borstvoeding Aardig, http://borstvoeding.aardig.be.
Katrien worked as a volunteer breastfeeding-counsellor, provincial coordinator and training manager for the Belgian breastfeeding-organisation Borstvoeding vzw between 2010-2014. In 2013 she became an IBCLC. Since than she's working as a lactation consultant and a nutritionist in private practice at the non-profit organisation Aardig Levenvzw.
Katrien often works with natural parents who choose for attachment parenting. She's doing research on full-term breastfeeding and is the administrator of a Dutch mothergroup for full-term breastfeeding-mothers on Facebook. Working with teenage mothers it's often on internet forums or in collaboration with the Public Centre for Social Welfare and municipality Herenthout, with the aim of supporting disadvantaged families.
Teenage mothers are perfectly able to breastfeed. Yet fewer young mothers initiate
breastfeeding compared with older mothers. And the ones who start with breastfeeding
switch more often over to formula during the first month postpartum.
Young mothers are more often influenced by their environment (family, friends) in their
feeding choice:
- Myths and prejudices about breastfeeding,
- Shame or fear of breastfeeding in public,
- Concerns about how to combine school and work,
- Latch-on- or pump problems.
Lack of confidence and low self-esteem are common in this group, so they often get
overruled by adults (grandparents, teachers, health workers) who "just want to help them"
and give formula advice.
Proper information, preferably in the form of peer counseling, is necessary to raise
breastfeeding rates among those youngsters.
Practical information is necessary, adapted to their specific situation of still-developing
adolescents and young mothers. Also needed, is awareness of the persons who will assist
in the education of her child: partner, mother, a good friend.
Training of healthcare workers and schoolteachers may also be needed, to clean up
prejudices about teenage-parenting and to ensure that she will be treated in a
breastfeeding-friendly way. If she can finish her education she gets more job
opportunities!
The school infrastructure, school curriculum, teachers and childcare-facilities have to be
flexible enough to support the choice to combine education and breastfeeding at the same
time.
Support and proper information throughout pregnancy and during the first six weeks
postpartum are crucial to make breastfeeding more likely to succeed. But ideally,
awareness occurs even though before a teenager is pregnant: as part of the health
education in schools!
The medical use of herbs is as old as mankind. In this lecture IBCLC and herborist Katrien Nauwelaerts explains the difference between the regular medical approach of breastfeeding problems and the more holistic solutions used in phytotherapy. Katrien Nauwelaerts explains how the use of herbs can support and sometimes even replace the more traditional clinical treatment of breastfeeding problems such as postpartum depression, low milk supply, oversupply, engorgement, breast infection, plugged ducts, mastitis, candidiasis, thrush, and Raynaud Syndrome etc.
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