Breastfeeding and Medically Complex Infants Lecture Pack

Angela Lober has been an educator and clinician for over 19 years. She has been an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant since 2005 providing evidence-based care within an academic medical center and within her community. Angela is the Director of the Arizona State University Lactation Education Programs offering on-line and academic elective on breastfeeding and lactation. She completed her PhD at Arizona State University's College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation focused on the breastfeeding complexities of late preterm infants.

Ellen is the lactation services manager at Intermountain Healthcare Primary Children’s Hospital. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Health Nutrition, is a Registered Dietitian and an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. Ellen has the unique advantage of using her nutrition knowledge as a lactation consultant. She has a passion for providing human milk for patients with nutritional challenges such as chylothorax and colitis. Her work on fat free human milk is published and has received national review. One of her career goals is to increase knowledge of nurses and healthcare providers regarding human milk immunology and breastfeeding thus improving lactation duration. Ellen has worked with the special needs breastfeeding dyad for the past 20 years at Primary Children’s Hospital to promote breastfeeding and human milk feeding. She designed, set up and manages the Mothers Milk Center at Primary Children’s hospital which opened in 2015. Ellen has presented at local, state and national meetings. She also has experience working at a corporate level with lactation consultants developing breastfeeding policies and protocols as well as lactation education programs for nurses and health care professionals.

Educator with the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA). She has a particular interest in breastfeeding and Down syndrome after her son was born with Down syndrome in 2014. Her journey of breastfeeding her son included a long inpatient hospitalization stay due to his treatment for cancer. She has worked in disability services for over 20 years including community learning disability nursing in the UK, supporting GPs to manage the heath needs of people with complex health conditions and intellectual disability, medical undergraduate education in intellectual disability and currently works in general practice as a Practice Disability Nurse. Heather facilitates Breastfeeding Education Classes to expectant parents, is a Trainer & Assessor in ABA’s training team and provides guidance and contributes to publications on breastfeeding a baby with Down syndrome.

Laurel Wilson, IBCLC, CLE, CCCE, CLD is a TEDx and international speaker, author, pregnancy and lactation expert, and consultant. She served as the Executive Director of Lactation Programs for CAPPA, the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association for 16 years and now is on the Senior Advisor Board. She served on the Board of Directors for the United States Breastfeeding Committee from 2016-2019. She also is on the Advisory Board for InJoy Health. She owns MotherJourney, focusing on training perinatal professionals on integrative and holistic information regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. She has her degree in Maternal Child Health: Lactation Consulting and is an internationally board certified lactation consultant. As the co-author of two books, The Attachment Pregnancy and The Greatest Pregnancy Ever, original Editor of the CAPPA Lactation Educator Manual, and contributing author to Round the Circle: Doulas Talk About Themselves, she loves to blend today’s recent scientific findings with the mind/body/spirit wisdom. Laurel has been joyfully married to her husband for nearly three decades and has two wonderful grown sons, whose difficult births led her on a path towards helping emerging families create positive experiences. She believes that the journey into parenthood is a life-changing rite of passage that should be deeply honored and celebrated.

Lyndsey is an experienced paediatric nurse, children’s public health nurse, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Holistic Sleep Coach, researcher and responsive parenting advocate. She has worked in hospitals, clinics, the community and within clients’ homes for 20 years, serving within the UK NHS, in private practice and voluntarily.
The co-founder and clinical director of the Holistic Sleep Coaching program, Lyndsey regularly teaches internationally, as well as providing mentorship for newer sleep coaches. She is passionate about responsive feeding, gentle parenting and promoting parental confidence and well-being.
With Professor Amy Brown, she is the co-founder of Thought Rebellion – an education and publishing company seeking to inspire, challenge and equip professionals and writers in the parenting, lactation and perinatal space with an evidence based revolution.
Lyndsey is currently a PhD researcher at Swansea University, exploring the needs and challenges of medically complex breastfed infants and children. In 2019 she set up the Breastfeeding the Brave project to raise awareness of the unique breastfeeding needs of chronically, critically, and terminally ill children in the paediatric setting. The mother of a childhood cancer survivor, she often talks about the impact of chronic serious illness on families, and seeks to support other families living through a serious childhood illness.
Lyndsey is a respected international speaker and teacher, and regularly speaks out against the dominant sleep training culture, as well as advocating for the rights of families to receive high-quality, compassionate and expert support. She is the author of Holistic Sleep Coaching (2018), Let’s talk about your new family’s sleep (2020), Still Awake (2021), Breastfeeding the Brave (2022) and co-author of The Writing Book (2022).

Mariana Colmenares Castano was born in Mexico City, and from an early age she was fascinated by animals and nature.She studied medicine at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), and foundher passion as a pediatrician doing her residency at the National Pediatric Institute. When her first child was born she witnessed the lack of knowledge and commitment to breastfeeding within the medical profession, and so she decided to specialize in breastfeeding medicine. She certified as a Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in 2011.Mariana is a member of the International Lactation Consultant Association, the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, and a proud founding member of the National Lactation Consultant Association of Mexico (ACCLAM), where she served on the Board of Directors as Education Coordinator (2014-2019). She is part of board director for the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine for a 3 year period (2019-2022) and recently named as secretary for the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. Mariana is a member of the team for Breastfeeding Country Index BFCI, a project from Yale University and Universidad Iberoamericana. She is consultant for the National Health Institute in Mexico and has collaborated with UNICEF in breastfeeding projects and part of the steering committee for the WHO. She has spoken at national and international conferences, co-published numerous articles and co-authored a chapter for the National Academy of Medicine. At the moment she is a Clinical Fellow in Community Paediatrics in London.