Perinatal & Newborn Care Continuing Education Course Bundle #3 (20.5 Hours)

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.

Debbie Fraser is an Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Disciplines, Athabasca University and a neonatal nurse practitioner in the NICU at St Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg Manitoba. She is the editor-in-chief of Neonatal Network and is the Executive Director of the Academy of Neonatal Nursing. Debbie has published three textbooks and over 70 book chapters and peer reviewed articles on topics related to high-risk newborns.

Debbie Fraser is an Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Disciplines, Athabasca University and a neonatal nurse practitioner in the NICU at St Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg Manitoba. She is the editor-in-chief of Neonatal Network and is the Executive Director of the Academy of Neonatal Nursing. Debbie has published three textbooks and over 70 book chapters and peer reviewed articles on topics related to high-risk newborns.

Dixie Whetsell, MS, IBCLC, has a Master’s Degree in Community Health Education from the University of Oregon. She began working with breastfeeding families in 1992 and became an IBCLC in 1998. She has worked as a lactation consultant in private practice, for county and state public health programs, and in healthcare settings. She began teaching lactation training courses in 2003, and has taught in hospital, community and academic settings. She currently works in Portland Oregon for Legacy Health in high risk maternal and pediatric hospitals. She also teaches lactation courses at Portland State University School of Community Health. She is an active member of the Oregon Washington Lactation Association, the US Lactation Consultant Association, and the International Lactation Consultant Association. She was a founding Board Member for Northwest Mothers Milk Bank, a HMBANA non-profit donor milk bank.

Jen McLellan is a publish author and certified childbirth educator who advocates for plus size women. She promotes positive information to empower healthy decision making during pregnancy. Within her blog, Plus Size Mommy Memoirs, she helps women navigate the world of plus size pregnancy, shares tips for embracing your body, and laughs along with the adventures of motherhood. Her work has been featured in major publications such as Yahoo Shine, Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, and International Doula. Jen is also a skilled patient advocate, professional speaker, wife, and mother to a charismatic 5 year old.

Dr Toohill is a research fellow in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University. Her PhD focused on a midwife psycho-education intervention for women with childbirth fear. In a randomised controlled trial she tested the efficacy of midwife counselling in women who screened high for childbirth fear. She found following midwife counselling that women’s confidence for birth had increased and childbirth fear levels decreased. She currently manages a project to translate this evidence to routine practice at the Gold Coast University Hospital. A midwife of more than 25 years, she was co-lead on the Queensland Normal Birth Clinical Guideline introduced in 2012, and is currently investigating enablers and barriers to use of this guideline. She is passionate about support for women to achieve normal birth, set up a publicly funded birth centre in 2006, the home of midwifery group practice on the Gold Coast.

- Nancy Irland, DNP, RN, CNM, is a highly respected nurse, author, and clinical leader. Her obstetrical experience spans more than 44 years. She has enjoyed supporting women through their journey into motherhood as a labor and delivery nurse, certified nurse-midwife, and perinatal clinical specialist in a high risk tertiary care center. She has presented nationally and internationally, most recently at the Royal College of surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). In 2013, Dr. Irland was honored by the Oregon March of dimes as Nurse Educator of the Year. She is the past AWHONN Oregon Section Chair, and has served on the editorial board of Nursing for Women’s Health. In that capacity, she wrote a column titled, “Understand What You Know.”Dr. Irland’s passion is creating materials for other peoples’ success. She incorporates humor and metaphor in her teaching, and is sure to provide you with “Aha!” moments that you can take back to work immediately.

Carrie Sue Halsey is a Clinical Nurse Specialist located in Houston, Texas. She earned her advanced nursing degree from the University of Cincinnati and her BSN from the University of West Florida. She is NCC certified in inpatient obstetrics and is an NRP and AWHONN instructor. She is a Trained Breastfeeding Educator and enjoys assisting parents with their breastfeeding goals. Carrie is a natural birth and breastfeeding advocate. Carrie advocates for education and empowerment for nurses and parents through on her blog, PerinatalEmpowerment.com and YouTube Channel. Her experiences of pregnancy, labor and birth as a mother, nurse, writer and educator have made her a passionate crusader for perinatal empowerment.

Theresa Nesbitt, RN MD ("Dr. Theresa") is an Obstetrician-Gynecologist with special training in Maternal Fetal Medicine. Her interests these days lie in promoting lifelong wellness for women with a focus on nutrition, reproductive health and breastfeeding. She is the Director of Family Health Coaching, editor of Babies and Breastfeeding Magazine and author of Evolutionary Eating: How We Got Fat and 7 Simple Fixes. She anticipates publication of her newest book Building a Baby Brain Bite by Bite - How to Eat Before, During and After Pregnancy next year. Her interest in brain growth and development, nutrition and developmental kinesiology have helped her to look at placentation, lactation and nutrition for reproductive fitness through a new lens.

Dr. Smillie is an American pediatrician who founded in 1996 the first private medical practice in the USA devoted to the specialty of breastfeeding medicine. Board certified by both the American Board of Pediatrics in 1983 and by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners in 1995, she values her continuing education from colleagues, research, and breastfeeding babies and their mothers. She’s been a member of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine since 1996, and an ABM Fellow since 2002. She serves as an advisor to the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding and on La Leche League International’s Health Advisory Council. Dr. Smillie speaks nationally and internationally about the clinical management of a wide variety of breastfeeding issues, always stressing the role of the motherbaby as a single psychoneurobiological system, and emphasizing the innate instincts underlying both maternal and infant competence.

Dr. Kathleen Baird is a Senior Midwifery Lecturer at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University and Director of Midwifery and Nursing Education, Women’s and Newborn Service, Gold Coast Hospital. For the last fifteen years Kathleen’s main research interests have centred around intimate partner violence, with a focus on violence during pregnancy. Kathleen’s PhD explored women’s experiences of partner violence during pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. Kathleen has been involved with domestic violence training of qualified health professionals, undergraduate and postgraduate health students and members of the voluntary services for several years. Kathleen is currently involved with several research projects in relation to intimate partner violence and the role of health care and sits on the Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Council.

Rebecca Dekker, PhD, RN, APRN is the founder of Evidence Based Birth. Rebecca is an assistant professor of nursing at a research university in the U.S. She teaches pathophysiology and pharmacology and conducts clinical research on cardiovascular and maternal health.

In 2012, Rebecca realized that it was very difficult for the average person to find information about evidence-based maternity care. Realizing that she had the skills to meet this need, Rebecca coined the term “evidence based birth” and founded www.evidencebasedbirth.com. The mission of Evidence Based Birth is to promote evidence-based practice during childbirth by providing research evidence directly to women and families.

Rebecca has served on the executive board of directors of www.ImprovingBirth.org, a non-profit whose mission is to bring evidence-based care and humanity to childbirth. Over the past two years, Rebecca has given many presentations about evidence based birth to nursing students, physicians, college students, and nurse midwives.

Dr. Karen D’Apolito is a Professor and Program Director of the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Program at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. She has made national and international contributions to the care of drug-exposed infants through both education and research. Dr. D’Apolito received her PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle and her Post Masters Certificate as an NNP from the University of Tennessee, Memphis. In 2011 Dr. Apolito became a Fellow in American Academy of Nursing for her work with substance exposed infants. She developed a unique inter-observer reliability program to train healthcare professionals in assessing infants for signs of withdrawal. She has published numerous articles related to the effects of intra-uterine drug exposure on neonatal abstinence and has been an invited speaker to many local, national and international conferences to speak on this topic. Dr. D’Apolito has participated in two large multi-site clinical trials associated with neonatal abstinence syndrome and she recently completed a grant received from the TN Department of Health to identify the common treatment practices of infants with NAS within the state of TN.

Miranda Buck, (RN(Paeds), BA(Hons), MPhil, IBCLC), has been a paediatric nurse since 1995 and has a background in neonatal and paediatric intensive care nursing. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Judith Lumley Centre and a lactation consultant at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. She also enjoys teaching into the undergraduate and postgraduate nursing programs as a visiting lecturer. Miranda is noted for her enthusiasm for evidence based care and an approach which draws on anthropological and developmental theories. Her particular research interests are breastfeeding difficulties, online peer support and breastfeeding in the neonatal intensive care unit. She lives in Melbourne with her daughters, Esme, seven and Sylvie, four.

Dr. Briere is a Nurse Scientist and Postdoctoral fellow with a joint appointment at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and the University of Connecticut, School of Nursing. Her clinical background is as a nurse in a level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. As a nurse in the NICU, Dr. Briere was passionate about getting mothers to hold and feed their babies, and be directly involved in the care and decision making during their infant’s hospitalization. During her doctoral program Dr. Briere’s research focused on the importance of direct-breastfeeding in the NICU. Towards the end of her program, she learned about the presence of stem cells in breastmilk. Since then, she has transitioned into a bench to bedside translation research trajectory where she is studying breastmilk stem cells. Her work is focused on breastmilk stem cells from mothers of preterm infants and their involvement in infant growth and development, specifically their protective and regenerative mechanisms.

Jacek Debiec is a Child & Adolescent and Perinatal Psychiatrist, and a Developmental Neuroscientist. He received his MD/PhD from Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland and completed his Psychiatry Residency, Fellowship in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, as well as Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at New York University, New York. His research interests include early life emotional learning with a special focus on infant attachment and fear learning. Dr. Debiec’s research findings have been published in top scientific journals. He received recognition especially for his work on memory reconsolidation and mother-to-infant transfer of fear and anxiety. Dr. Debiec lectures nationally and internationally and is a recipient of several awards and honors, including Fulbright Fellowship, Herder Fellowship, Neil Miller New Investigator Award from Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, Donald F. Klein Early Career Investigator Award from Anxiety & Depression Association of America and other.

Robin Grille is a psychologist in private practice and a parenting educator. He is the author of three internationally acclaimed books: ‘Parenting for a Peaceful World’, ‘Heart to Heart Parenting’ and ‘Inner Child Journeys’. Robin has delivered his seminars and workshops throughout Australasia, North America, UK and Asia. His experiential, skills-based and informational parenting courses have helped many people to embrace parenting as a transformative, personal growth journey.

Drawing from 30 years’ clinical experience and from leading-edge neuropsychological research, Robin’s seminars and courses focus on healthy emotional development for children as well as parents; while building supportive, co-operative parenting communities. Robin’s work is animated by his belief that humanity’s future is largely dependent on the way we collectively relate to our children.

To find out more about Robin Grille’s work, his books, articles and seminars visit: www.robingrille.com

Dr. Nichole Fairbrother is an assistant professor with the UBC Department of Psychiatry and the Island Medical Program. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2002, and subsequently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in women’s reproductive health through the Child and Family Research Institute and the UBC Department of Health Care and Epidemiology. Dr. Fairbrother’s research is in the area of reproductive mental health with an emphasis on perinatal anxiety disorders and epidemiology. Her current research projects include (1) a CIHR-funded study of maternal postpartum thoughts of infant-related harm and their relation to postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder (ppOCD), (2) a study of maternal perinatal anxiety disorders prevalence, (3) a series of experiments to investigate cognitive and affective responses to infant crying and infant shaking, and (4) an online survey to assess the newly developed Childbirth Fear Questionnaire (CFQ) as a screening tool for specific phobia, fear of childbirth.

Janice Banther has been a pioneer leader among birth professionals in advocating for pregnant women who are incarcerated. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Birth Behind Bars (BBB). BBB began providing childbirth and parenting classes and labor support services to inmates in 2001. Prior to 2001 Janice focused her childbirth work primarily with at risk mothers; homeless, addicted and abused. This body of work has earned Janice the highest certifications. She is a certified CAPPA Childbirth Educator, Labor Doula, Happiest Baby on the Block, Infant Massage Instructor, Trainer and Bereavement Counselor with RTS. BBB expanded its training of birth professionals to work with inmates in 2015 with the release of Birth Behind Bars Certification program; an online and manual based program equipping childbirth educators and birth professionals to work in a jail or prison environment in the United States and Internationally.

Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, is a world-renowned medical anthropologist, international speaker and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery and obstetrics. 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 The Power of Ritual (2016), and lead editor of 10 collections, the latest of which is Birth Models That Work (2009), which highlights optimal models of birth care around the world. Volume II: Birth Models on the Global Frontier, co-edited with Betty-Anne Daviss, is in process, as is Sustainable Birth, co-edited with Kim Gutschow. Robbie serves as Editor for the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative (www.imbci.org) and Senior Advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction. Most of her published articles are freely available on her website www.davis-floyd.com.