Megan Stephenson Breastfeeding Counsellor

13/08/2025

The AIMS Helpline provides free support and information on pregnancy and birth issues. Here Sarah explains how AIMS’ support was able to make a positive impact on her experience. Thank you Sarah for your kind words.

13/08/2025

13/08/2025

AIMS salutes FiveXMore's work to highlight how "Racism, both structural and interpersonal, continues to shape Black women's maternity experiences" in their recently published Black Maternity Experiences report https://fivexmore.org/blackmereport
AIMS is committed to raising awareness of racial inequalities in the maternity services www.aims.org.uk/assets/media/789/aims-position-paper-racial-inequalities-in-maternity-services.pdf

09/08/2025

27/07/2025

This is would be a lovely local activity. Anyone know anyone who can help?

Hi everyone,

I hope you're having a great weekend!

As the Secretary of the Splash Pad for Ely Campaign group, I'm sharing an update on our mission to bring a fantastic splash pad to Ely!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of Craig Farrow and Neil Waterson, who have both volunteered their time for free, we've received valuable feedback from our Pre-Planning Meeting with East Cambridgeshire District Council.

We're now working towards obtaining planning permission. To make this dream a reality for the children of Ely, we're reaching out for more help. We're looking for passionate individuals who can offer their skills and time pro bono/ low cost to help us with the next steps. While we understand not everyone can volunteer, if you have expertise that could assist us in securing planning permission, or if you know someone who might be able to help, please get in touch.

Every bit of support, especially the gift of your time and expertise, brings us closer to giving Ely a wonderful new splash pad.

If you're interested in contributing or know someone who might be, please contact us at splashpad4ely@gmail.com.

Many thanks for reading and for your support!

02/07/2025

Free class. Looks like fun

09/06/2025

Random Monday breastfeeding fact: Human babies are usually singletons and are born with good sensory development. Our milk is high calorie, low fat, and quickly digested. Other mammals like this use the high energy milk to cling to or follow their mothers. But our babies are born with a need for rapid brain growth. So we use the energy for that! At birth we aren't even able to regulate out own temperature, breathing or heart rate effectively on our own. We are very dependent on being held by an adult for so much!

02/06/2025

Random Monday breastfeeding fact: The act of suckling stimulates the mother's and the infant's vagal nerve releasing cholecystokinin. This hormone is gastrointestinal - responsible for feelings of fullness, well-being, and sleepiness. This is what causes a baby to look "milk drunk" after feeds and helps mothers to fall back to sleep quickly after night feeds.

06/05/2025

Come and have cake and a cuppa with me and Meriel about all things home birth. This is for anyone who wants to talk about their options around home birth, logistics, emotions, how to prepare siblings all of it and more.

This group is free to attend DM for the address or to join the WhatsApp group.

12/04/2025

❗ ICYMI

Contaminants in Infant Formula

A news report was published on March 19th, ‘Investigation reveals heavy metals, including ‘potentially harmful’ levels of lead, in baby formula’ by The Independent which includes a number of products for sale in the UK.

It reports on an investigation by the US organisation ‘Consumer Reports’ in which 41 infant formulas were tested for lead, cadmium, mercury, aluminium, potassium, bisphenol A, bisphenol F and bisphenol S, acrylamide and PFAS (“forever chemicals”). More than 12 infant formula products among 41 tested had “potentially harmful” levels of heavy metals – specifically lead.

The report states that “almost all samples contained lead, and eighteen formulas contained 50 to 100 percent of the “Maximum Allowable Dose Level” for a three-month-old (as set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment)”. However, EU/UK regulations permit 0.02mg/kg lead in powdered infant formula (equivalent to 20 micrograms/kg). None of the samples tested exceed this level and all were a long way off; the highest level recorded was 4.1micrograms/kg.

While we can be encouraged by products meeting the regulatory requirements that exist for some contaminants, we ought to be concerned that not all are covered by regulations, with key ones missing including aluminium, the bisphenols and acrylamide.

Practical steps to reducing potentially harmful contaminants in the diets of infants and young children include protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding and basing diets on nutrient-dense unprocessed and minimally processed foods, as shown in our ‘eating well’ guides.

To read more about this news, read our newsletter here: https://www.firststepsnutrition.org/news -banner

Read the articles here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/consumer-reports-baby-formula-heavy-metals-finding-b2718116.html

https://www.consumerreports.org/babies-kids/baby-formula/baby-formula-contaminants-test-results-a7140095293/