New Beginnings Baby Café Expands to Thursday Mornings

Starting in 2024, Brookings Health System will add Thursday morning sessions from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. for New Beginnings Baby Café. The free, drop-in breastfeeding support group will meet at Brookings Hospital inside the obstetrics unit’s family lounge.

New Beginnings Baby Café offers ongoing, professional lactation care and supports breastfeeding mothers in every aspect of nursing. It is facilitated by registered nurses who are also IBCLC lactation consultants. It allows attendees to talk with other breastfeeding mothers, get one-on-one help from lactation consultants, and weigh-feed-weigh their baby to ensure an infant is getting enough milk.

The new Thursday sessions are in addition to the Tuesday sessions from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Prairie Perk-Up Coffee Shop inside Brookings Hospital. All pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are welcome to attend either session. 

Brookings Health System established New Beginnings Baby Café in 2015 to help mothers and babies continue to breastfeed after leaving the hospital. It is the only Baby Café session in South Dakota registered with Baby Café USA. 

Brookings Health System’s OB unit, New Beginnings Birth Center, has eight beds consisting of five labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum (LDRP) suites and three postpartum recovery rooms. As a Baby-Friendly designated hospital, the unit provides full OB services to expectant parents and enables area residents to deliver their baby close to home with a local physician. To learn more about New Beginnings Birth Center, please visit brookingshealth.org/OB.

About Brookings Health System

Brookings Health System, located in Brookings, South Dakota, includes a 49-bed hospital, the 79-bed The Neighborhoods at Brookview nursing home, Brookhaven Estates senior living apartments, Yorkshire Eye Clinic & Optical, and medical clinics in Arlington, White and Volga, South Dakota. It is a non-profit, city-owned facility that offers the community a full range of inpatient, outpatient, emergency and extended care services. Brookings Hospital provides local access to doctors in Brookings and offers robotic da Vinci surgery and Mako robotic-arm assisted procedures, making it one of the premier rural community hospitals in South Dakota. For more information about the services offered at Brookings Health System, please call (605) 696-9000 or visit us on the Web at brookingshealth.org.