BEDFORD — When a couple of teachers decided to create an area where teen moms could breastfeed their babies, they were hopeful it would encourage more teenss to breastfeed and would make it easier for them to stay in school and not drop out.
Thanks to a grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation, obtained by the Lawrence County Breastfeeding Coalition, the teachers equipped the room with a rocking chair, painted words of encouragement on the wall and provided a hospital-quality breast pump. But after several months of being available to students, only a handful of teachers are using the room.
“It’s tough to get the word out,” said Beth Felts, teacher of early childhood education at the North Lawrence Career Center who also helped set up the breastfeeding room.
The goal of the initiative is to strengthen the bond between mother and child and keep the mom on track with her education.
“It’s an ongoing struggle and a repeating cycle that we are constantly battling, but even helping one teen mom/dad finish his or her education will help both mom and child in the long run,” Felts said.
Identifying girls early on in their pregnancy to let them know what resources are available at the school is important to providing girls with the support they need, said Felts. She, and other teachers and counselors at NLCC and Bedford North Lawrence High School, work together to assist girls.
For many years, NLCC has operated a child care center as part of its early childhood education and child development curriculum. Students in those classes care for children under the supervision of the child care director and aides. Faculty and students can bring their babies to the center, but Felts said many girls are unaware it is there or that they can bring their babies there while they attend school. Students’ babies can stay in the child care center for free through their first birthday. After that, the fee is $2 per day, which includes lunch.
Felts said currently there are no students using the child care center. Even though several girls have been pregnant during the school year, they have either left school or have kept their babies home with family members, she said.
When Lea Busch returns to BNL in August, she may be the first student to use the breastfeeding room.
Busch, 15, gave birth to a son Blake in April.
“I decided to nurse because the doctors kept telling me it’s healthy for him and I wanted to do what was healthy for him and it’s great bonding time,” she said.
Busch knows she is not like most teen moms.
“I’ve talked to teenagers my age about it and they think it’s gross and nasty and weird,” she said. “I think they feel that way because they are young.”
Bucsh said she researched it and decided to do what was best for him.
“It’s so much healthier than formula,” she said.
A freshman, she was making As and Bs in all her classes, she said and stayed in school until she delivered her baby.
She said she plans to return to BNL in August with her son. He will stay in the child care center while she attends classes.
“I want to nurse him a year,” she said. “In talking with other moms, they usually do it one year.”
The young mom said she understands why many teen moms feel it’s too much to try and raise a baby and attend high school but she plans to stay in school.
“I’m going to graduate,” she said. “After school, I want to become a nurse for babies.”
When a high school student learns she is pregnant, her life becomes complicated quickly. Felts makes it a point to talk with girls and provide them a packet of information.
“I see between five and 10 girls a year who become pregnant,” Felts said. “The nurse will let me know, or a student will mention it. I meet with them to let them know the resources available, that the child care center is here so they can stay in school, and they can take the child development class here and spend two or three periods each day with their baby and learn how to take care of their baby.”
Felts said if a teen mom is interested in breastfeeding her baby, she will give her resources to help her learn more.
“If they say no, I tell them that’s something to consider, but I don’t push it on them,” she said.
The reality of the pregnancy, physical changes to her body and taking care of a baby — all while attending school — are big challenges for a teenager. Add to that advice from family members, possible family instability and the idea of making a decision to breastfeed, and girls can become overwhelmed.
“I think there’s a big struggle because, statistically, the girls getting pregnant often are the ones who don’t always have the necessary support system at home,” said Kayla Hoffman, Hoosier Uplands Early Head Start home visitor and member of the county breastfeeding coalition. “There’s a lot of pressure on teenagers, but more so for a teen mom trying to stay in school and maintain her grades.”
In 2014, Lawrence County’s birth rate among teenagers 15-19 was 51 per 1,000, putting the county in the top 10 for most teen births in the state. Jennings County has the highest teen birth rate with 64 per 1,000, according to the County Health Rankings web site.
Only five counties in Indiana received the Kellogg grant to support teen moms.
Hoffman said the local breastfeeding coalition pursued the grant because teen breastfeeding rates are lower than rates for women age 20 and older.
National data from 2012 shows that 60 percent of moms younger than 20 initiate breastfeeding, compared with 79 percent of older mothers. At six months postpartum, 22 percent of teens breastfeed compared to 50 percent of older moms.
“When the grant idea was introduced to us, it was kind of experimental so we didn’t know what to expect, but we had a goal and the money for it,” Hoffman said. “You hope moms will take advantage of it, but then you find out they don’t, so you look at what are the issues that are stopping them.
“Overall, the goal would be that we would never need the breastfeeding support program. The goal would be that we would ultimately see no teen pregnancies in our schools, therefore eliminating the need for breastfeeding support at all. We all know that’s not the case, but sometimes people find it easier to turn a blind eye to the problem of teen pregnancy.
“We know that when problems go unaddressed, they become epidemics. We should consider ourselves lucky that we have school administrators and health professionals that recognize the needs of the teens in our schools by supporting them. From talking to teens about abstinence and contraceptives all the way to breastfeeding support.”
Felts from time to time talks to her students about their opinions on breastfeeding.
She said some fear that it would be painful, others haven’t been exposed to it in their families, making them reluctant.
Junior Gwendalyn Crews said she has learned in the class that it is beneficial for a baby to nurse, “It’s cheaper and healthier.”
But sophomore Lexi Boruff said she knew a young mother who stopped breastfeeding because it “took too much time.”
“When they do to choose to breastfeed,” Felts said. “They do it because it’s the only thing they can control.”
Tina Cardarelli, director of breastfeeding services for the Indiana Perinatal Network, recently wrote about the challenges of getting teen moms to breastfeed in a newsletter detailing the Kellogg grant initiative.
“We have just completed year two of our grant and the lessons learned have been huge. One thing that I know for sure after working on this grant — this is a stubbornly complex issue. This grant has taught us as much about what doesn’t work as what does,” she wrote.
She cited obstacles such as getting consent to work with minors, navigating the school day and bringing community partners in to work with the schools.
“Helping the communities see breastfeeding as an important issue in light of the many other teen parenting challenges that come into play has been especially challenging,” wrote Cardarelli.
NLCC counselor Lesley Kimmel, one of the faculty who worked on the breastfeeding initiative with Felts, said each teen mom has a different challenge.
“A lot of girls drop out after the first trimester,” she said. “Other girls want to stay in school but they want out of the main building so they go to LEAP (alternative education).”
Some girls leave school, have their baby and return to school the next semester.
“They feel a diploma is secondary at this point,” said Kimmel.
Kimmel and Felts also invited pregnant teens to meet with them in a group setting, where they could support each other. Feeling supported could go a long way to keeping them in school.
“You want these girls to not feel isolated,” Kimmel said. “You also don’t want to glorify the situation, but let them know this may be hard to deal with but you don’t have to give up on everything.”
Hoffman said she did not consider the lack of teens being reached by the breastfeeding initiative at NLCC to be a sign that it didn’t work.
“When someone needs it, it’s there,” Hoffman said. “The fact they have it and worked so hard on it, even if all they did was what they’ve done so far, they would be stellar in my book. It’s so important for girls to know they have support at the school. I know the teachers there care about the kids and are trying to create these positive outcomes for them.”