Women and Infants Center Education and Resources

It’s important to use a rear-facing car seat to keep your baby safe while in the car. But how you place your baby in the seat is just as important as making sure the seat is properly secured....

Proper car seat use can help keep kids safe by significantly reducing the risk of injury, hospitalization, and death in children. “For children younger than three, the best practice is to keep them rear facing until they become too heavy or too tall to fit properly in the car seat,” says Washington Regional Trauma Outreach Coordinator Sarah Webb-May, RN....

One of the most common questions parents ask as their baby’s due date approaches is: What should I pack in my hospital bag? The answer is, not much! The Washington Regional Women and Infants Center will provide most of the necessities you and baby will need while in the hospital, such as items to help with post-partum healing and all the basics for your little one....

Neonatal massage can benefit a baby's development....

Washington Regional’s Women and Infants Center offers a lactation team of registered nurses who have all earned the designation of International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant. Brandi Sprouse, RN, BSN, IBCLC, one of those lactation consultants, answers questions about the COVID-19 vaccine and breastfeeding....

With a full lactation team – registered nurses who have all earned the designation of International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant – Washington Regional’s Women and Infants Center offers breastfeeding support to moms while they are in the hospital and also after they go home. Tonia Squires, RN, IBCLC, one of the lactation consultants, shares three tips for successful breastfeeding....

Babies are born with some natural protection against disease, but their immune systems are not fully developed. “Newborns are still pretty vulnerable, so it’s important that they get the immunity the mother provides through her breast milk,” says Tonia Squires, RN, IBCLC, one of the lactation consultants at Washington Regional’s Women and Infants Center....

Washington Regional, the only hospital in Northwest Arkansas with an Infant Nutrition Lab, is also the first hospital in the region with a human milk depot. When premature babies or babies with medical conditions are unable to breastfeed while in the neonatal intensive care unit, the Infant Nutrition Lab supplies these babies with either the mother’s expressed breast milk, fortified milk and formula or donor milk from the milk depot....

Some women who breastfeed find that their milk production exceeds the needs of their infant. If donated to a milk bank, that excess breast milk could benefit premature or critically ill babies in a neonatal intensive care unit. Washington Regional is a depot site for the Oklahoma Mothers’ Milk Bank. With the area’s only milk depot, Washington Regional provides a place for pre-approved lactating women to drop off donations of their expressed breast milk....

Premature or fragile newborns need highly specialized care in the first few weeks of life, and that goes for their nutrition, too. Washington Regional’s Women and Infants Center provides the area’s only Infant Nutrition Lab, also known as a centralized milk preparation room or milk lab. The Infant Nutrition Lab primarily serves babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, or the NICU....