Background
Whether they breastfeed, express milk, use formula or a combination of these, many women experience shame, guilt and embarrassment about how they feed their babies. They can feel unsupported, criticised, and like they need justify these decisions to others. This can negatively impact their wellbeing.
My Work
I collaborated with a multi-disciplinary team to develop an interactive website for parents and family members, friends, health professionals and others who provide support with feeding infants. The website presents thought-provoking and accessible messages and activities that help people think differently and feel better about feeding babies.
I developed a strategy for involving end-users in creating and improving the website. This involved a series of stakeholder events and an iterative process of user feedback to ensure the website was as engaging and useful as possible to a wide range of users.
The Feeling Good About How We Feed Our Babies website launched at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Infant Feeding and Inequality in Westminster in 2019.
As of December 2022, it has had over 104,000 visits and fantastic feedback and reviews.
This work was appraised as having ‘outstanding reach and significance’ in the University sector’s Research Excellence Framework 2021 Impact exercise.
Funder
ESRC
With support from NCT and Breastfeeding Network
Key Collaborators
Professor Fiona Woollard1
Dr Heather Trickey2
Dr Marta Glowascka1
Phyll Buchanan3
1.University of Southampton
2.Cardiff University
3.Breastfeeding Network
Image credits: Fiona Woollard (Super-cute illustrator as well as Prof!)