2015 Speakers & Topics
Alys Brown is married and a mother of five children, all of whom were long term breastfed ( 3 of whom are tongue tied ). She has set up a Midwifery training course on how to diagnose and treat tongue ties in Hamilton, N.Z, and is on the national subcommittee of the midwifery council looking at regulation of midwives to treat tongue ties. She has trained as a LLL PCPA, is a registered direct entry trained midwife and IBCLC, and has also performed over 2,000 frenotomies over the past 6 years. She is passionate about indigenous breastfeeding knowledge, antenatal education, smoke free pregnancies and safe sleep practices.
Tongue Tie..Is it? Isn’t it?...These questions we have faced the past 5 years in our practice here at Waikato Hospital. Secondary, Tertiary hospital area servicing 5,000 birthing women, their babies and families.We have had a 6% referral,treatment rate in 2011-12, 8% in 2012-13 and over 10% in 2013-2014 The incidence globally ranges from 4-13% of newborn babies are found to have this anomally. The theory of regression states that the lingual frenulum should regress while the baby develops in utero. However we challenge this theory and believe that environmentally this phenomenom is increasing, we are also getting better at spotting these tongue ties and active treatment is making a difference to initiation of breastfeeding and duration anecdotally from women within our Waikato population. We have undertaken audits around women’s satisfaction with the service and whether or not frenotomy does make a difference to the Women’s breastfeeding experience. I would like to share some of these experiences women and their babies have had- often these women do not have a voice and some Health professionals are very quick to discredit how a woman is feeling feeding a tongue tied and or lip tied baby. I wish to discuss these issues. We have also been approved to run a New Zealand Midwifery council approved course for midwives to recognise, treat and follow up tongue ties. I wish to discuss how this programme has helped more women access treatment through their own LMC’s- Lead maternity Carers.
Amy L. Gilliland, Ph,D., BDT(DONA) - Dr. Gilliland is an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, a psychology instructor at Madison College, and is one of the first DONA International birth doula trainers. Over her twenty-five year career, her work has spanned the perinatal spectrum. Dr. Gilliland has published research on birth doula support for over ten years, but has also published on female sexuality.For UW Extension, Dr. Gilliland conducts workshops on attachment and infant mental health. She has worked with hundreds of families during the perinatal period. Her real love is taking research and making it immediately useful for those at her presentations. Dr. Gilliland is a lively and engaging speaker. Her newest venture is her popular blog, www.doulaingthedoula.com.
All parents expect sexual adjustments during the postpartum period, however few report feeling prepared for the massive changes that occur. Research reveals that common birth practices negatively influence sex and sexuality for both men and women. They may also have a psychological impact that shows up in a couple’s sexual relationship. Midwives are uniquely situated to make changes to practice and communication that can positively influence pp sexual adjustment. In addition, midwives have the potential to fill the educational gap and provide postpartum support as parents work through these changes. This session reviews research to date and offers concrete suggestions during this life transition to a new identity.
Barbara Morrison, PhD, CNM is an associate professor in the Janice M. Riordan Distinguished Professorship in Maternal Child Health at Wichita State University School of Nursing, Wichita, KS, USA. Dr. Morrison’s mission is to advocate, educate and inspire health care reform to enhance physiologically and ecologically appropriate care for the mother-newborn dyads especially as it relates to establishing breastfeeding, frequent Kangaroo Care (KC) and holding, and optimal attachment. Dr. Morrison’s research interests include the impact of breastfeeding and KC on psycho-neuro-endocrine development of newborns and parents, and implementing best evidence-based breastfeeding and attachment practices in hospital birthing and postpartum units and in the community. Dr. Morrison shares her research and passions through presentations, writings, radio shows and her website www.DrBarbCNM.com.
The current paradigm of infant and family care is:
- Newborns are helpless
- Mothers are clueless
- Fathers are useless
But helplessness and separation negate evolutionary processes developed over millennia of mammalian existence. For our ancestors, who constantly held and carried their infants, breastfeeding was frequent snacking on infant’s schedule. Now, infants eat scheduled meals and sleep separated from mother. Breastfeeding is considered nourishment only. In reality, breastfeeding is part of a nurturing process promoting affectional bonding, emotional, behavioral and cognitive development, and providing protection from acute and chronic illnesses. Full benefits of this process come when infants are in their evolutionary habitat, skin-to-skin on their mother’s chest (Kangaroo Care, KC). In KC infants receive non-noxious emotional and sensory stimuli leading to better utilization of breastmilk and optimal hardwiring of the central nervous system. During this presentation breastfeeding as part of a nurturing process and the optimal environment will be discussed.
Karen Strange teaches Integrative Resuscitation of the Newborn, an online neonatal resuscitation course which includes the physiology of newborn transition, evidence-based studies, and the “When, Why and How” to provide neonatal resuscitation in the least traumatic way. Her information is confidence-based, not fear-based.
A Certified Professional Midwife (1996), and AAP/NRP Instructor (1991), Karen specializes in debriefing, having conducted over 1,000 hours of debrief/case reviews with all types of birth professionals. She has taught neonatal resuscitation skills to over 14,000 people worldwide.
Karen beautifully weaves her famous explanation of the Baby’s Experience of Birth through her presentations and shares her “Simple Tools” that can be used for all babies but especially for babies that have had interruptions or intervention during birth or the time afterwards.
Karen’s lectures are dynamic and engaging. Come, listen, enjoy, learn, you will be happy you chose this lecture.
Topic: Neonatal Transitional Physiology, Delayed Cord Clamping De-Mystified - [View Abstract]
There is an embryological blueprint for what happens at birth (and before) for the baby on all levels of their being, physiologically, psychologically and emotionally. An awareness of this blueprint creates a new conceptual framework for what is embedded in the process of birth. Once you are aware of the sequence of events that occurs spontaneously throughout the process of gestation, labor, birth and beyond (a sequence that all mammals follow) you will have a glimpse of how birth was “set up to work in case no one was there”. When interruptions occur in the sequence of birth a profound imprint is left which impacts how we come into relationship with everyone we meet, with ourselves, and how we live our lives daily. Specific methods are taught for healing, repair and integration.
In this captivating explanation you will get a deep and clear understanding with new insight about the transition that babies make at birth physiologically and psychologically. Learning how we go from fluid filled lungs and oxygenating with the placenta to becoming air breathers without their placenta. You will learn what is most important in the moments when the baby is born. This goes way beyond learning about blood volume and red blood cells.
Michel Odent studied medicine in Paris and was educated as a surgeon. He has been presented in Lancet as “one of the last real general surgeons”. Dr. Odent was in charge of the surgical and maternity units of the Pithiviers Hospital (France) from 1962 to 1985, where he developed a special interest in environmental factors influencing the birth process. He introduced concepts like home-like birthing rooms and birthing pools in maternity hospitals, and singing sessions for pregnant women. After his hospital career he was involved in home birth. He founded the Primal Health Research Centre in London, and designed a database (primalhealthhresearch.org) in order to compile epidemiological studies. These studies explore correlations between what happens during the “Primal period” and health later on. Odent is the author of the first articles about the initiation of breastfeeding during the hour following birth, the first article about the use of birthing pools during labor, and the first article applying the “Gate Control Theory of Pain” to obstetrics. In a book published in 1986 (“Primal Health”), he provided evidence that homeostasis is established during the “primal period” (fetal life, birth and the months following birth): this is the phase of life when human basic adaptive systems are adjusting their “set point levels”. Odent is the author of 13 books published in 22 languages. In his books he constantly refers to the concept of reduced neocortical activity as a key to rediscover the basic needs of laboring women and to make possible a real “fetus ejection reflex”.
The best way to evaluate the effects of stress deprivation at birth is to compare neonates born by pre-labor cesarean and all the others. There are documented differences regarding lung functions, sense of smell, brain development, metabolic pathways, establishment of the microbiome, and gene expression. In the current scientific context it would be relevant, from the point of view of the baby, to contrast birth with labor and birth without labor, instead of only contrasting vaginal route and abdominal route.
Penny Simkin, PT, is a physical therapist who has specialized in childbirth education and labor support since 1968. She estimates she has prepared over 13,000 women, couples, and siblings for childbirth. She has assisted hundreds of women and couples through childbirth as a doula. She is author or co-author of books for both parents and professionals, including “The Labor Progress Handbook;” “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide;” “When Survivors Give Birth: Understanding and Healing the Effects of Early Sexual Abuse on Childbearing Women;” “The Birth Partner: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions,” She has developed teaching materials for birth classes and produced several videos for educators, doulas, and families , the latest of which is for siblings-to-be, “There’s a Baby.” She is co-founder of DONA International (formerly Doulas of North America) and PATTCh (Prevention and Treatment of Traumatic Childbirth).
Currently, she serves on the editorial board of the journal, Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care, and serves on the senior faculty of the Simkin Center for Allied Birth Vocations at Bastyr University, which was named in her honor.
Today, her practice consists of childbirth education, birth counseling, and labor support, combined with a busy schedule of conferences and workshops.
Penny and her husband, Peter, have four grown children and eight grandchildren from 11 to 28 years of age, two grandchildren-in-laws, and a pug, Lola.
The human microbiome consists of trillions of microbes – bacteria and viruses—the balance of which largely determines our health and well-being throughout life. The largest microbiomes in women are located in the mouth the gut, the uterus, the vagina, and the skin. Breastmilk also provides a vital microbiome for the infant. Each microbiome contains different mixes of microbes, which fluctuate as the environment, within and outside the body, fluctuates.
Midwifery care practices have always fostered mother-baby contact, minimal separation, and breastfeeding. However, with increasing knowledge about the microbiome, midwives need to re-examine common practices for how they impact the microbiome, for example: the high cesarean rates, even among midwives, even brief separation from mother, frequent use of antibiotics, the impact of immersion in water on the mother’s skin microbiome and on the transfer of vaginal secretions to the baby in a water birth. Application of the new knowledge will further improve long-term outcomes.
Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, is a medical anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of reproduction. An international speaker and researcher, she is author of over 80 articles and of Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992, 2004); coauthor of From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey (1998); and coeditor of eight collections, including Childbirth and Authoritative.
In this presentation, I define "the postmodern midwife" as one who takes an informed and relativistic approach to different ways of knowing about birth and who can invent ways to make discrepant systems complementary. Recognizing the limitations and strengths of the biomedical system and of her own, the postmodern midwife moves fluidly between them to serve the women she attends. She is a shape-shifter--she knows how to work to change the medical system while appearing to comply with it; a bridge-builder, making alliances with biomedicine where possible and building connections between traditional and professional midwives; and a networker. When possible she attends conferences and meetings, making connections with other midwives in other parts of the world, increasing her ability to translate between systems, and gaining consciousness of midwifery as a global movement. Through her interlinkages with other midwives around the world, she works to create a global and increasingly shared culture of midwifery as well as to preserve, carry forward, and teach to others in her own and other cultures the best of her own cultural traditions around birth.
Sarah is a qualified GP/family physician, mother of four homeborn children, and author of the internationally best-selling book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering (Celestial Arts US, 2009). Sarah has a particular interest in the hormonal physiology of pregnancy, labor, and birth, and has been writing and lecturing internationally on this subject since 2001. Her in-depth report, Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing, published with Childbirth Connection, was published by the National Partnership for Women and Families in January 2015. She lives with her family in Brisbane, Australia. For more about Sarah, see her websites www.sarahbuckley.com and www.gentlenaturalbirth.com
Contemporary childbearing has benefited from many medical advances, and from highly skilled and committed maternity care providers. However, current high rates of maternity care interventions may be disadvantageous for the healthy majority. This presentation summarises the healthy functioning of hormonal physiology in relation to four important hormonal systems, and the benefits of physiologic childbearing for mother and baby. It also explores the possible impacts of common maternity care practices on this hormonal physiology, including induction of labor, epidural analgesia and caesarean section, and suggest midwifery approaches that may optimise hormonal physiology when intervention are needed. Dr Buckley also considers the hormonal physiology of childbearing in relation to other models including epigenetic perspectives and the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) model. This presentation is based on Dr Buckley’s ground-breaking 2015 report Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing.
Dr. Speakers Full Name
Speaker Credentials
Annet Mulder first became interested in breastfeeding in the year 2000, when she became a mother for the first time. During and because of her own breastfeeding experiences, in 2002 she became a volunteer with the Dutch breastfeeding Organization and in 2008 sat for and passed the exam administered by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners. As an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, she now
Annet Mulder first became interested in breastfeeding in the year 2000, when she became a mother for the first time. During and because of her own breastfeeding experiences, in 2002 she became a volunteer with the Dutch breastfeeding Organization text text text text more name mulder first became interested in breastfeeding in the year 2000, when she became.
Dr. Speakers Full Name
Speaker Credentials