Page updated: 03 Jan 2012
Breastfeeding
You can give your baby the best start in life by breastfeeding exclusively until he or she is six months old, and then breastfeeding alongside solid food. Breast milk arms your baby with all the nutrients he or she needs to grow and also protects against infections, obesity, asthma and other illnesses.
The health benefits also extend to mums, who have a lessened chance of developing ovarian and breast cancer and weak bones.
Other support:
Food for Life - weaning video
The health visiting team within NHS Trafford has produced a weaning film to support the government's new recommendations for infant weaning to commence at six months instead of four, and to address the rise in childhood obesity.
The aim is to support improvements in infant nutrition and reduce future obesity and its related problems (such as type 2 diabetes). The long-term goal of this initiative is to improve the eating habits of the nation by focussing on a baby's first introduction to food.
This 21-minute video is intended as a weaning guide for parents and a promotional aid for health professionals. It features parents recounting their real life experiences of the highs and lows of weaning their babies, and also includes expert advice from a health visitor, a dietitian and a speech and language therapist.
The DVD has been produced using the expertise gained from the extremely successful sleep video, Sweet Dreams, produced five years ago. Sweet Dreams is used nationally to support parents who are experiencing sleep problems with their children.
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To order a copy of the Food for Life video/DVD, e-mail Linda Morris and she will provide you with an order form.
Sweet Dreams - sleep video
Over half of children under five years old experience sleep problems. This can cause great stress within the family.
To combat these problems, health visitors in Trafford have been running a very successful sleep clinic for a number of years now. Evaluation of the sleep group has demonstrated a 90% success rate. Unfortunately not every parent can attend a sleep clinic and for this reason health visitors in Trafford have produced a video to help parents.
The Sweet Dreams video lasts 15 minutes and explains simply and clearly how parents can improve a child's sleep pattern. It contains real life experiences of parents of children with sleep problems and how these problems were addressed. It also includes visual information about solving infant sleep problems.
This video will undoubtedly be of great use to any parent or carer involved with a sleepless child. It is also useful for health visitor's training schools, GP and community clinics, and occupational health departments, from where it could be loaned to families in order to improve the sleeping habits of babies and pre-school children.
To order a copy of the Sweet Dreams video, e-mail Linda Morris and she will provide you with an order form.
For more information on either of these videos send an email to publications@trafford.nhs.uk or call 0161 873 6043.