World Breastfeeding Awareness Week runs from 1st to 7th August every year, and while the public conversation tends to focus on the benefits of breastfeeding for mothers and babies, there is a group of professionals whose contribution to making it possible rarely gets the recognition it deserves.
Nurses and midwives.

The decision to breastfeed is one thing. The reality of it, particularly in those first few hours, days, and weeks, is something else entirely. And for many new mothers, the difference between giving up and finding their way through is the nurse or midwife who took the time to sit with them, show them, reassure them, and come back to check again.

This World Breastfeeding Awareness Week, we want to celebrate that.

What the research tells us
The evidence for breastfeeding is well established and you will already be familiar with it. The benefits for infants include reduced risk of infection, lower rates of sudden infant death syndrome, and better long term health outcomes across a range of conditions. For mothers, breastfeeding is associated with reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer, faster postnatal recovery, and improved mental health outcomes.

But intention does not always translate into practice. Studies consistently show that while the vast majority of mothers in the UK intend to breastfeed, a significant proportion stop earlier than they had planned, often citing difficulties in the early days that they did not feel adequately supported to overcome.

That gap between intention and experience is where nurses and midwives live and work.

The clinical skill behind the support
There is a tendency in public discourse to treat breastfeeding support as a soft skill, something warm and encouraging rather than genuinely clinical. That fundamentally misrepresents what good breastfeeding support actually involves.

Assessing latch and positioning. Identifying tongue tie and understanding its impact on feeding. Recognising the signs of mastitis early and supporting appropriate management. Supporting mothers of premature or medically complex babies for whom breastfeeding presents additional challenges. Providing evidence-based guidance on expressing, supply concerns, and mixed feeding. Navigating the emotional complexity of a mother who is struggling and feels like she is failing.

These are clinical skills. They require knowledge, practice, and judgment. And the nurses and midwives who do this work well do it in environments that are often pressured, understaffed, and moving at a pace that makes sitting down with a new mother for thirty minutes feel like a luxury rather than a clinical priority.

The emotional weight of the role
Beyond the clinical skill, there is the emotional dimension of this work that deserves acknowledgement.

Supporting a new mother who is exhausted, in pain, and feeling like her body is letting her down requires a particular kind of presence. It requires patience when time is short. It requires the ability to hold someone's distress without trying to fix it too quickly. It requires knowing when to encourage and when to simply validate that this is hard and that struggling does not mean failing.

Midwives and nurses who work in this space absorb a great deal. The wins are meaningful and the difficulties are real, and both deserve to be recognised.

Why this week matters for the profession
World Breastfeeding Awareness Week is primarily understood as a public health campaign. But for nurses and midwives it is also an opportunity to reflect on the value of the work they do in this space and to advocate for the conditions that make it possible to do it well.

Adequate staffing levels on postnatal wards. Time to provide proper one to one support. Access to specialist infant feeding teams. These are not luxuries. They are the conditions under which good breastfeeding support can actually happen, and they are worth fighting for.

To every nurse and midwife supporting new mothers this week
The work you do in those early days with a new mother and her baby matters more than most people will ever know. The confidence you build, the difficulties you help navigate, and the moments where you make something feel possible that felt impossible, those things stay with people.

At JustNurses, we are proud to work with nurses and midwives who bring this level of skill, care, and commitment to their practice every day. If you are looking for a new role that values everything you bring, we would love to help you find it.

Browse our latest nursing and midwifery vacancies or get in touch with our team today.