La Leche League of Connecticut
Virtual Healthcare Provider Seminar

Impact of Birth Practices on Breastfeeding

Linda J. Smith, MPH, IBCLC, FACCE, FILCA

Objectives:

1. Explain the origin of birth moving from home to hospitals related to current outcomes.

2. Discuss risks of induction of labor to mother and baby.

3. Discuss outcomes of Cesarean surgery to the breastfeeding mother and baby.

4. Discuss risks of chemical pain relief methods including epidurals on breastfeeding.

5. Discuss strategies to help breastfeeding dyads recover from birth interventions.

Restoring the Continuum: ABC Protocol for Preventing and Solving Breastfeeding Problems

Linda J. Smith, MPH, IBCLC, FACCE, FILCA

Objectives:

1. Describe strategies to improve or restore access of the mother and baby to each other.

2. Describe a systematic, sequential approach to restoring breastfeeding when early problems occur.

3. Describe follow-up and ongoing support that supports breastfeeding.

Re-inventing: Breastsleeping: Humankind’s Oldest and Most Successful Sleep and Feeding Arrangement

James McKenna, PhD

Objectives:

1. Learners will be able to summarize what breastsleeping is and how and why millions of mothers breastsleep i.e., sleep next to their infants (either on the same or a different surface) to breastfeed, absent of hazardous factors despite medical authoritative attempts to eradicate it.

2. In support of breastsleeping, and why parents instinctively reach for their infants in the middle of the night, learners will be able to explain why infants are so hard to resist, which is due in part to biological cues given by infants and biologically processed by adults who are designed to respond to specific infantile signals involving movement, facial expression, smells and cries and other vocalizations.

3. Learners will be able to describe the hormonal and neuroendocrine-based processes move parents to care and, in this case, to cosleep. 

4. Learners will be able to state how and why infant sleep recommendations do not uphold, nor do they reflect evidence based medicine principles, as is claimed by the AAP.

5. Learners will be able to explain the differences between the physiological and behavioral differences that make breastsleeping (bedsharing with cosleeping) significantly safer than what occurs during formula-fed-bedsharing and how and why breastsleeping must be differentiated epidemiologically from other types of bedsharing. 

6. Learners will be able to discuss the ethical challenges health professional and especially lactation counselors face by being told they will be fired from their professional positions if they share what they know with their clients and patients about safer cosleeping in the form of breastsleeping or any kind of bedsharing.   

Gentle Manual Therapeutic Techniques in Lactation: From Relief to Empowerment

Maya Bolman, RN, IBCLC

Objectives:

1. Attendees will be able to explain and demonstrate Gentle Manual Therapeutic Techniques in Lactation: Breast Gymnastics, techniques for hand expression, and Reverse Pressure Softening 

2. Attendees will be able to describe and discuss hands on techniques for therapeutic breast massage in lactation. 

3. Attendees will be able to summarize the latest research findings on the role of therapeutic breast massage for breastfeeding mothers.