The Melrose Messenger

Melrose-Based Middlesex County Baby Café Hosts Fundraiser for Breastfeeding Support

By Ellen Putnam

On February 12th, the Middlesex County Baby Café, which provides a free, drop-in breastfeeding support group in Melrose at the Church of the Nazarene, will be hosting a fundraiser at T’ahpas 529 to further their mission of helping parents in the region make breastfeeding work for them.

In 2006, Lucia Jenkins, a nurse and lactation consultant at MelroseWakefield Hospital and a longtime Wakefield resident, founded the first Baby Café at the hospital, based on a model that was first introduced in the UK. Jenkins later established Baby Café USA as a nonprofit organization that now supports 140 Baby Café sites in 26 states, including 12 sites in Massachusetts.

The Baby Café model involves free, drop-in, informal breastfeeding support groups that usually meet weekly and are led by lactation consultants who can provide guidance and support for breastfeeding challenges. “It started as a simple idea,” said Jenkins, “and very quickly evolved into a multi-faceted national public health model.”

When MelroseWakefield suspended in-person meetings at the hospital due to the pandemic and moved their Baby Café meetings to Zoom, Jenkins formed the Middlesex County Baby Café. The Middlesex County Baby Café initially met outside before moving back to the Church of the Nazarene, where co-Chair Vivian Erwin Speen, who is also a lactation consultant, joined. Eventually, MelroseWakefield resumed in-person Baby Café meetings as well, providing breastfeeding parents with another meeting option.

While many Baby Café groups are supported by local organizations like YMCAs and hospitals, the Middlesex County Baby Café is entirely self-funded, which means that they rely on grants and community donations to rent their space and pay the lactation consultants who facilitate the meetings. “We’re just living in the moment in terms of how long we can self-fund,” Speen said, noting that community support has been strong so far.

The meeting space, which is in the Church of the Nazarene on Short Street, is part of what makes the Middlesex County Baby Café successful. “We really like our space,” said Speen. “It’s not easy to find a cozy room, and there’s a toy room next door for older babies and siblings. They have air conditioning, which is hard to find. And they let us put breastfeeding pictures on the walls, which is hard to find, too!”

“Every time I go to the Café,” Speen went on, “I say to myself, ‘I have to keep this open.’” Most weekly meetings have at least a dozen breastfeeding moms in attendance, and while some might only come for a week or two, others will come for multiple weeks to get ongoing support or just to spend time with other moms. Since the Middlesex County Baby Café became independent in February of 2023, it has served 850 families in total.

There are a number of benefits from breastfeeding, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state that “breast milk is the best source of nutrition for most babies.” According to the CDC, over 80% of newborn babies received at least some breast milk, but by 6 months only 56% of babies were still receiving any breast milk. While families may choose to stop breastfeeding for any number of reasons, difficulties with milk supply, baby’s weight gain, or pumping when a mother returns to work can cause families to stop breastfeeding before they would otherwise have chosen to. The Baby Café aims to provide support so families can breastfeed for as long and as much as they choose.

“I think folks don't truly understand how taxing breastfeeding difficulties are or mistakenly think it doesn't matter,” said Jenkins. “High-quality research clearly shows that failure to provide community breastfeeding support results in shorter breastfeeding duration, which in turn contributes to a less healthy population, both physically and emotionally.”

Families with significant breastfeeding challenges can hire a private lactation consultant, but those services can be difficult to schedule, aren’t always covered by insurance, and can cost hundreds of dollars, meaning that for many families, a single visit from a lactation consultant while they’re still in the hospital is the only support they get.

The Baby Café makes that support more accessible. The lactation consultant who facilitates the Baby Café meeting talks with attendees about their challenges - with how the baby latches onto the breast and feeds, when and how much to pump breast milk, or how to combine breastfeeding and formula feeding in a way that works for the family. And mothers can do a weighted feed, where they weigh the baby before and after a feed to see how much milk the baby is getting. This can be critical information for families who are trying to solve issues with low milk supply or slow weight gain.

“We serve expecting and breastfeeding and pumping parents from all walks of life,” said Speen, “and we’re happy to answer all of your feeding questions and support your individual feeding journey.” While the focus of Baby Café is on addressing challenges with breastfeeding, Speen emphasized, “We want people to stay and feel comfortable and make connections and form friendships with other parents. Community is everything when you have a baby, and we want to provide that, too.”

While it might seem duplicative to have two different Baby Café organizations in Melrose, for parents of newborns, who might be bringing their baby to the pediatrician weekly or even more often, having support available multiple times per week can sometimes mean the difference between persisting with breastfeeding and giving up.

“It’s not just Melrose moms who come to our Baby Café,” Speen shared. “People come from as far as Wilmington or Waltham. We’re hoping to open more Baby Cafés to serve those families so they don’t have to travel, but they definitely do.”

Donations to the Middlesex County Baby Café also go to support the new Milk Depot at MelroseWakefield. The Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast in Newton is the only milk bank in New England, and it serves hospitals and families throughout the region. Milk donors, who are mothers with surplus milk supply, go through a registration process that includes blood testing, and donated milk is pasteurized so safety is ensured for recipients.

The milk depot in Melrose, which opened this fall, provides an easier way for donor families to drop off milk donations, although donors still need to go through the registration process with the milk bank in Newton. “People who have extra milk can drop it off at the Baby Café, so they don’t have to go to Newton, and the milk bank doesn’t have to send a courier,” explained Speen. “It’s cost-saving for the milk bank and easier for donors. Donated milk is a precious commodity, so anything we can do to increase the amount of milk is good.”

While individual families can receive donated milk, it is most important for babies who are in the NICU, and specifically for premature babies. The CDC recommends that infants with very low birthweight (3 lbs or less) be provided exclusively with breastmilk, because giving them formula can cause serious health conditions. Not all mothers of premature babies can produce milk right away, which makes milk donations for NICUs essential.

Breastfeeding isn’t the right choice for every family, and supplementing or exclusively formula feeding is fine for most babies. But the benefits of breastfeeding for families who choose to do so make the support Baby Café provides to breastfeeding families in Melrose, Wakefield, and beyond an essential service for our community.

To learn more about attending or donating to Middlesex County Baby Café, contact Vivian Erwin Speen or visit the Middlesex Mommies Facebook page.

Posted January 22nd, 2025