This week is World Breastfeeding Week!  As well as being your personalised baby expert, our free Baby Buddy app has a variety of advice films, including tips about breastfeeding, mums talking about the benefits of it, how to achieve a comfortable position in attachment, and a film about breastfeeding while you are out and about.

Our ‘From Bump to Breastfeeding’ series of films are included in the Baby Buddy app and follows four mums who decide to breastfeed their babies - it will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about breastfeeding and how to do it successfully.

Breastfeeding is great for you and your baby because it:- makes you feel close to your baby as both of you produce the love hormone oxytocin
- boosts your baby’s immune system to any diseases you have had in your life
- helps to prevent sickness and diarrhoea
- helps prevent diabetes
- reduces obesity
- makes your baby smarter (breastmilk is ‘brain food’ so raises IQ) 
- reduces sudden infant death syndrome
- is always available – especially in the middle of the night!
- helps to prevent breast and ovarian cancers
- is available any time and anywhere so gives you the freedom to go out and about

Mums who choose not to breastfeed, or stop after a few weeks can:- keep baby close and look into baby’s eyes while feeding
- let baby take the teat into his/her mouth
- pace the feeds so baby stops when he/she has finished
- reduce the number of people bottle feeding baby
- make feeds up safely with water that has boiled and cooled for no longer than 30 minutes
- make each feed fresh

The Baby Buddy app has been developed with healthcare professionals and young parents and also includes daily updates on your baby’s progress, wellbeing tips for mums, a question and answer section for anything you need to know, appointment reminders, local information and a variety of other films.  As one young mum recently said:  ‘I'm loving the app.  It is really helpful to nervous first time mums such as me.  It helps you feel much more at ease and not quite so on your own with it.’

Healthcare professionals can order leaflets and posters to promote the app, get local service details featured in the app, and get support for using Baby Buddy in professional practice.