Breastfeeding and Sleep from Confusion to Clarity

This 2-day conference features:
Helen Ball
BREASTFEEDING, BEDSHARING & INFANT SLEEP Human infants are the most neurologically immature of all primates at birth, yet infant care practices in many industrialised societies fail to acknowledge the dependent nature of human infants and their need for physical contact. In this session the Euro-American preoccupation with infant sleep independence is traced historically and compared with infant care practices across cultures. Helen also examines the complex relationship between infant sleep location and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and explains why a simple message to 'ban' bed-sharing is in neither babies' nor parents' best interests.
Gillian Griffiths
OUR SENSE-ATIONAL BRAIN AND HOW WE MAY SHAPE ITS DEVELOPMENT Gillian explores the recent neuroscience and evidence in the areas of stress, trauma, sensory
processing, co-regulation and attachment and how to discuss these subjects with parents and colleagues in a family friendly language. Gillian will present this in relation to sleep, settling and daily care-giving.
Stephan Millett
WHY WE HAVE A SPECIAL OBLIGATION TO CHILDREN Stephan discusses some of the underlying reasons why we have obligations to children and why we have a special obligation to babies, in particular. By understanding our obligations we have a better understanding of the ethics of dealing with infants and children.
Pinky McKay
THE CON OF CONTROLLED CRYING There is increasing evidence that some approaches to 'teaching babies to sleep' may cause long term, adverse changes to a baby's developing brain, interrupt mother-infant bonding, undermine mothers' confidence and have detrimental effects on the natural physiology of breastfeeding. Pinky examines this evidence and the impact of controlled crying for mothers and babies.
Helen Beaton
MOVEMENT CONTROL MATTERS FOR FEEDING, SLEEPING AND RELATIONSHIPS Helen discusses how changes in sleep and handling practices over the past decade have increased the incidence of deformational plagiocephaly, torticollis, motor delay, feeding and self regulation disorders in infants. She presents important handling strategies required by infant care givers to promote normal development.
Professor Helen Ball
INFANT SLEEP ON THE POSTNATAL WARD Helen presents results from a randomised control trial on the effects of two forms of mother- infant sleep contact (baby-in-bed and side=car crib) on the postnatal ward. This study found that sleep environments facilitating direct contact between mother and infant on the post-natal ward increases breastfeeding frequency, with beneficial consequences for breastfeeding duration, in comparison with rooming-in.
Pinky McKay
SLEEPING LIKE A BABY – GENTLE WAYS TO HELP BABIES SLEEP Pinky offers gentle options to encourage infant sleep and sttling that also promote optimum brain and emotional development, along wih a positive breastfeeding relationship and a secure parent- infant body.
Joy Anderson
CRYING BABY, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS – A DIETARY APPROACH There are a number of causes of unsettled babies and their sleep is usually also quite disturbed. Joy will focus on problems arising from food allergy and/or food intolerance to substances reaching the baby from the mother's diet through her milk, or from direct consumption.
Gillian Griffiths
SENSE-ATIONAL SLEEP AND SENSE-ITIVE CAREGIVING
Gillian talks about how to enable parents to understand their own, and their babies, sensory preferences so that they can make sense of their babies cues, tune into their unique needs and respond sensitively and effectively to support sleep and daily caregiving.