Infant Sleep: Science and Social Factors

Helen Ball trained in Human Biology and Biological Anthropology, obtaining her PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1992. She established the Parent-Infant Sleep Lab at Durham University in 2000, was promoted to Professor in 2007 and served as Head of the Anthropology Department 2013-2016.

Her research examines the sleep ecology of infants and their parents including attitudes and practices regarding infant sleep, behavioral and physiological monitoring of infants and their parents during sleep, infant sleep development, and the discordance between cultural sleep preferences and biological sleep needs. She conducts research in hospitals and the community and contributes to national and international policy and practice guidelines on infant care.

In 2016 she was appointed as Chair of the Scientific Committee for the Lullaby Trust, and in 2018 Durham University received the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education for Helen’s research and outreach work. She is a Board Member of ISPID (the International Society for the Study and Prevention of Infant Deaths) and directs the Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre (DISC) and Baby Sleep Information Source (Basis).

Erin is a Parent Educator in Ottawa, Canada and the mother of four young adults, including twins. After working in the area of community mental health as a Registered Social Service Worker, she jumped into Prenatal and Parenting education with the Ottawa Childbirth Education Association where she has been designing and providing classes for expectant parents, grandparents, and families expecting multiples for the last 20 years. She divides her time between teaching a class called Bringing Baby home to expectant parents, Normal Infant Sleep classes and working as a Postpartum Doula. In 2018 she returned to school to complete her M.ed for Healthcare Professionals.

Melissa Bartick, MD, MSc, FABM works as a hospitalist at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge MA, is an internist and is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She has numerous breastfeeding publications in peer-reviewed journals. She served as the chair of the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition from 2002 to 2014, where she was also a founder of Ban the Bags. She served on the Board of Directors of the United States Breastfeeding Committee from 2009-2015. She has served on the Board of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine since 2019, where she has coauthored clinical protocols, including the 2020 Bedsharing and Breastfeeding protocol. She was founder of the Breastfeeding Forum of the American Public Health Association, where she served two terms as chair. She is founder and co-chair of her state’s Baby-Friendly Hospital Collaborative. She has blog contributions to the Huffington Post, the WBUR CommonHealth Blog, among others. Dr. Bartick received her BA from the University of Virginia and holds an MSc in Health and Medical Sciences from University of California, Berkeley and an MD from University of California, San Francisco. She works as a hospitalist at Mount Auburn Hospital and is the mother of two grown sons. As of June 2020, she is pursuing an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health.

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).

Karen Kerkhoff Gromada, MSN, RN, IBCLC, FILCA has been an IBCLC since 1991 and has worked as an IBCLC in both private practice and hospital settings. She also has experience as an adjunct clinical instructor for the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing and as a staff nurse in labor and delivery, childbirth education and postpartum discharge nursing care. Gromada was accredited as a La Leche League (LLL) Leader in 1975 and formed the first LLL group for mothers of multiples after the birth of her twin sons. The experiences of the group’s mothers provided the basis for her book Mothering Multiples: Breastfeeding and Caring for Twins or More. Her numerous articles and chapters about breastfeeding multiples have been published in professional and lay publications. A former International Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA) president (1994-96), she was designated Fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association (FILCA) in 2008.