Thursday
Oct222009
Would you answer a survey about your breastfeeding experience?
Thursday, October 22, 2009 
I'm really pleased to see more and more organizations stepping up to provide positive messages and support for breastfeeding. I've been thrilled to be working with Best for Babes for a while now to try to spread their message about beating the booby traps (and can't wait to tell you all about some exciting upcoming initiatives!), I'm always happy to recommend kellymom.com as a great resource for research-based breastfeeding information and support on their message boards, and I'm a card carrying member of La Leche League.
Personally, I think the more good information there is out there to support breastfeeding women and to promote breastfeeding, the better (and I dream of the ways we could all work together to do an even better job with our advocacy). So when I heard about the efforts of the women behind Bravado Designs nursing bras to educate the public at large about breastfeeding and support a positive breastfeeding experience for women in North America via their Bravado Breastfeeding Information Council, I was happy to honour their request to tell my readers about a survey they are conducting to better understand the breastfeeding experiences of women.
I should note that when I took the survey, I was not comfortable giving out my baby's birth date (as requested), so I just put her month and year of birth instead. I followed up with Bravado afterwards and although they are not able to change the question at this point, they said it is fine to give the birth month instead of date if you prefer.
The survey is open until next Wednesday at midnight and you can win a prize by participating (see the survey for details).
Image credit: Couldn't resist using a pic of my bloggy friend Christina from Ami Expat nursing her little tiger when I came across it on flickr!
Reader Comments (19)
Done! A bit challenging in the work area, as I work at home, although in that sense my work is definitely breastfeeding friendly!
And that's a great picture.
I'd be more excited about winning a gift card from Target if every time I buy something for a baby I didn't always get coupons for formula. My nursing pads and breastmilk pumping storage bags really says I want a coupon for formula that implies a breastfed baby needs to be supplemented with formula.
Done. I agree with Stephanie about the work-from-home bit! I mostly skipped that page, since anything I have to say probably isn't relevant. Fortunately, it didn't give me an error message for not answering the questions.
I answered it based on what I was doing when I was BF (worked full time outside the home and pumped for a full year). That was a good survey. I hope they get a lot of good responses!
Survey took some time (15min) but was well worth it, because I'm a 100% committed breast-is-best mom and anything to promote the cause is worth it! Btw, interesting that you appear to be Asian but the kid is blond-blue-eyed, never seen that before and I live outside Washington D.C. where everybody is biracial. :-)
Done!
@Crystal: The picture isn't of me, it is my friend Christina. But it is a great pic!
Just a note: A few people have mentioned that the survey seems to assume that children over 3 years old are not nursing anymore. I will mention that to Bravado.
I'm still breastfeeding my 2.5 years old child. I'm a breastfeeding helper and even here in the UK, we reckon that kellymom is a great site.
At present I'm helping at this cafe: http://rugbybreastfeedingcafe.co.uk/, which has launched a calendar to raise funds for support. The area I'm in has a low breastfeeding rate, although swine flu is scaring mums who wanted to bottlefeed to go with breastfeeding...
I finished the survey although I couldn't exactly tell if they meant how you felt nursing your first child or your second child.... the child's age they wanted was the youngest child, but I felt and reacted differently toward breastfeeding before my FIRST child so I answered most of the questions from that standpoint. Also there was one question that was something like "Who influenced you the most to keep breastfeeding" the choices were Mom, Friend, Partner... I wanted one that was "BABY!" ha ha! My baby, especially my first, is the person who most influenced me to keep nursing since he loved it so much even during times when I didn't love it. Anyway I hope the results are useful to them!
I own my own company, so I raved about how supportive my boss (me!) was of me breastfeeding and pumping at work!
@Lei: That is awful. I have heard a few other people say that too. There is no Target where I live, so I haven't seen it first hand. Are the coupons specifically targeted to what you buy? E.g. if you went to target and bought underwear and a toaster, would it give you different coupons than if you buy nursing pads and breastmilk pumping storage bags?
The survey wasn’t very well constructed. For example, they ask for the partner’s gender but then refer to the partner as "he" all over the place and even assume you have a mother in law, etc. I found many of the questions to be much more invasive than asking my child’s birthdate! But I did it anyway. :-)
@Crystal - My husband is Chinese, and we've managed to produce a blue-eyed, very light brown haired little boy. :D Gotta love genetics!
@Ruby: I agree that it could have been constructed better in some places. I used the "other" box in a lot of places. But I hope it will be useful nonetheless.
done! that was fun. i hope they appreciate my chemo twist on extended breastfeeding!
I couldn't properly answer one of their first questions: I'm both pregnant AND nursing my "1-3 yr baby". That they use radio buttons instead of check boxes is annoying and leaves no room for tandem nursing, which seems odd for a nursing bra company, y'know? I chose not to participate further. :
The pic is of me. I'm mixed Asian, but have no idea how the blond hair/blue eyes thing came about from my side, since my dad was brown haired/brown eyed - and so is my husband (well, hazel-eyed)! My son seems to take after my father in law. The wonders of genetics! By the way, I grew up outside of DC, near Reston, VA.
@Angela: That one got me too! I'm TTC, and nursing >3 yr old.