Breastfeeding support and awareness celebration comes to Tanner Beach
Elizabeth Hutson, of Huntington Station, with her husband, Dante, breastfed their older son, Romeo, now 2, and is also breastfeeding their younger son, Cyrus, now 5 months old. Credit: Tatyana Bogdan, Imagine That Photography
One thing Elizabeth and Dante Hutson won’t have to pack when they take their two sons — 5-month-old Cyrus and 2-year-old Romeo — to The Breastfeeding Support and Awareness Celebration at the Town of Babylon’s Tanner Beach Senior Center on Saturday morning: Infant formula.
Elizabeth Hutson, 25, of Huntington Station, is a stay-at-home mother who is breastfeeding Cyrus.
“It’s hard to meet other moms and children, especially when they’re very young. I think it would be nice to have a community and share information,” she says.
And she and Dante, 24, a business owner, will mark World Breastfeeding Week, which is celebrated the first week of August every year, supported by WHO, UNICEF and other health organizations.
The Breastfeeding Celebration, organized by Suffolk County, is meant to offer camaraderie, education, and physical and emotional help to breastfeeding women. The free event runs from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Senior Center, 2 Tanner Park in Copiague, and no parking or proof of residency is required to attend.
“It’s really just to shine the light on breastfeeding and normalize it and support people in their effort to breastfeed if that’s their choice,” says Ellen Higgins, director of perinatal health services for Suffolk County.
The primarily indoor event includes 15 to 20 resource tables from organizations such as Long Island Head Start, Stony Brook Medicine and the county’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, says Laura Babyatzky, breastfeeding coordinator for the WIC Program of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. It will also include food, raffles, face painting and, weather permitting, outdoor games and activities for children, she says.
Good Samaritan University Hospital, of West Islip, for instance, will have a table highlighting its weekly Breastfeeding Café, New Mother’s Gathering Place and Mother’s Circle of Hope. The latter is a group for women experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety, says Rita Ferretti, coordinator of lactation services at Good Samaritan.
The county is asking that families planning to attend RSVP by calling 631-854-4023 or visit forms.office.com.
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
