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Harlingen Medical Center Designated as “Texas 10-Step” Hospital for Promoting Breastfeeding
- Updated: December 23, 2016
HARLINGEN – An award-winning Women’s Center at Harlingen Medical Center has been designated as a “Texas Ten Step” program in the effort to promote breastfeeding as the best nutrition for newborn babies.
Harlingen Medical Center earned the Texas Ten Step Program facility designation from the Texas Department of State Health Services. The program encourages breastfeeding as the preferred method of feeding for newborns and infants.
Based on the World Health Organization / UNICEF’s “Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding,” the program aims to assist a hospital’s support of breastfeeding mothers before, during, and after delivery, including helping to identify breastfeeding resources for the mother after she is discharged.
Breastfeeding is encouraged immediately after birth at Harlingen Medical Center, as mothers are taught about “skin-to-skin” breastfeeding of their baby.
Two board-certified breastfeeding educators at Harlingen Medical Center, Jenny Diaz, RNC, IBCLC, left; and Priscilla Claudio, RN, IBCLC, have helped the hospital to be designated as a “Texas Ten Step” program in the effort to promote breastfeeding as the preferred nutrition for newborn babies.
“The purpose of skin-to-skin is to encourage breastfeeding, by placing the baby on mom’s chest area as soon as possible after birth,” said Jenny Diaz, RNC, IBCLC, a registered nurse and certified lactation consultant at Harlingen Medical Center.
Ms. Diaz, along with Priscilla Claudio, RN, IBCLC, also a nurse at Harlingen Medical Center, are certified as breastfeeding instructors by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners. Ms. Claudio noted that several studies have shown that breast milk helps protect newborn babies from many health conditions.
Pregnant women can learn about breastfeeding even before the baby is born, by attending free childbirth preparation classes which Ms. Claudio teaches on the last Saturday morning of every month, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, in the hospital’s Medical Office Building (MOB) Conference Room. The conference room located at 5505 S. Expressway 77 in Harlingen (on the first floor of the building closest to the Expressway, behind the elevators, in Suite 102).
For more information about the classes and other services of the Women’s Center at Harlingen Medical Center, please call (956) 365-1139, or visit www.HarlingenMedicalCenter.com/Services/Womens-Center.aspx.
