Infant feeding specialist contact (by referral only)

Following the referral, we will review the information to establish the support required. We will offer either a phone call or face to face appointment.

For face to face appointments, you will be seen by a member of the team either in your home or in a clinic venue (this will be clear on the appointment invitation). The contact will last up to 90 minutes. During the contact we will listen to your feeding journey to date and explore with you your feeding goals. We will observe your baby feeding and may assess their mouth and tongue movements. We may, as part of the clinical assessment, also weigh your baby. We will then chat with you about a plan to support you to move to your feeding goals

Please ensure you have your baby’s red book available for the appointment, as well as any other equipment you use for feeding or giving top up feeds; eg nipple shields, bottles, feeding cups.  These should be clean and ready to use.

As part of the assessment, we will observe a feed, wherever possible please do not feed your baby immediately before the contact. If they are hungry and cannot wait give a smaller feed than usual.

This will be discussed with you at your appointment. Our health visitors are trained and experienced in supporting feeding. We will work in partnership with your health visitor to provide ongoing support and review the feeding plan.  We also have a variety of breastfeeding groups across Derbyshire which are run by Breastfeeding Network trained volunteer peer supporters.

We look at all our referrals weekly on a Monday. We then send appointments out, usually via SMS. Our waiting time is approximately 3 weeks.

Your health visitor will have chatted with you about a plan of support and care, however, you may find the following links helpful viewing depending on your unique circumstances:

• Breastfeeding position and attachment 
• Breast compressions 
• Breastfeeding pre-term and early term babies 
• Breastfeeding twins and triplets and more