Baby Friendly award for Daisy Hill Hospital and Newry & Mourne locality

Daisy Hill Hospital and Newry & Mourne locality are celebrating achieving reaccreditation with the prestigious Unicef Baby Friendly award.

The award is given to hospitals who are deemed to have best practice standards in place to strengthen mother-baby relationships and to support mothers who chose to breastfeed.

In addition to the latest award the Southern Health and Social Care Trust also has Baby Friendly status in Craigavon Area Hospital and Armagh-Dungannon, Craigavon-Banbridge community localities.

Sandra Hewitt, Trust Infant Feeding Specialist Midwife, says:

"In the trust, 63% of mothers choose to breastfeed their babies. We know that breastfeeding helps protect babies from a range of illnesses like gastroenteritis, chest infections and ear infections.

"We support mums and babies in spending time just getting to know each other; we encourage lots of skin-to-skin contact and we help mums to understand how their babies communicate so they can respond because that's so important for babies' brain development and for relationship building."