If you’re a new visitor to Breastfeeding 1-2-3, welcome! A summary of posts to date can be found here. For return visitors and newbies alike, here’s a fun bit of news from the world of lactation activists, a.k.a. lactivists:
Women across Canada and the United States participated in the sixth annual Breastfeeding Challenge on September 30, 2006. Over 4,685 babies nursed simultaneously at 156 sites throughout 19 provinces, territories and states. The winning regions had the most babies participating as a percentage of the birth rate in their region. I’m happy to congratulate the 2006 winners:
Category A Regions – more than 50,000 births per year
1. Quebec, Canada: 32.5% (2,371 babies, with 797 gathered in one Montréal site!)
2. Ontario, Canada: 6.8%
3. Texas, US: 0.2%
Category B Regions – 10,000 to 50,000 births per year
1. British Columbia, Canada: 5.4%
2. Manitoba, Canada: 1.5%
3. Saskatchewan, Canada: 1%
Category C Regions – less than 10,000 births per year
1. Yukon, Canada: 2.3%
2. Nunavut, Canada: 1.9%
3. North West Territories, Canada: 1.2%
The Quintessence Foundation of Vancouver, British Columbia, developed the challenge in the spirit of friendly competition to promote the benefits of breastfeeding.
By the way, the current Guinness world record for the most women breastfeeding simultaneously was set by 3,541 women in the city of Manila in the Philippines on May 4, 2006.
Hi Shannon! Several sites in the United States participated in the event. You can find a full list of sites and contact information here:
http://www.babyfriendly.ca/challenge/regionlist.php
Anyone interested in participating next year can register a new site if there’s not one nearby.
Neat post. Has anyone heard if there is anything like this in the US?