A mother who has already buried children does not take a stranger’s word about feeding.
The household lived on the husband’s daily wage work, and the mother was caring for a large family. Forty-five days after the twins were born, both infants had diarrhoea. They had weighed 1.8 and 1.9 kilograms at birth and were being fed goat’s milk. She believed she did not produce enough breast milk for two babies.
Start where she was: she was already doing the work of keeping two infants fed under conditions that would defeat most people, and she needed nutrition and health support she had reason to trust.
A DEHAT facilitator and the local Anganwadi worker discussed colostrum, breastfeeding and infant feeding with her. She did not accept it immediately. That hesitation is the most instructive part of the story. The facilitator came back four or five times and brought her husband into the conversation.
On 27 June 2011 she stopped goat-milk feeding and began breastfeeding. The Anganwadi worker weighed the children monthly and showed her the growth chart. After a month each child had gained more than half a kilogram and the diarrhoea had resolved. She continued breastfeeding to six months and then introduced complementary foods.
She also acted on advice about her own nutrition, establishing a small kitchen garden with green, iron-rich vegetables. Her own weight increased by 7.4 kilograms over six months.
The central actor is the mother. She weighed advice against her own experience, changed the feeding, sustained it for months, followed the growth information and grew food. Her husband’s participation and the Anganwadi worker’s regular monitoring made it durable. DEHAT’s contribution was patient counselling and a connection to the frontline service that already existed.
At eleven months both children were still in the yellow zone of the growth chart, approaching green. They still needed attention. What the record shows is sustained maternal action supported by visible feedback and a local service worth returning to.
She did not accept it immediately. That hesitation is the most instructive part of the story.
Counselling That Comes Back
One visit changes nothing. Five visits, a growth chart the mother can read herself and an Anganwadi worker who keeps weighing. The cost is time, repeated.