Diet Culture and Fat-Phobia: Supportive Counseling Around Weight, Health & Lactation
Bonnie Holt Logsdon (she/her), is a Registered Dietitian, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and Certified Lactation Educator™ through CAPPA, and a DONA-trained birth doula with over 18 years of experience in community-based practice.
In her private practice, Bonnie Knows Breast, she blends her nutrition and lactation work to support families during the prenatal and postpartum periods. Bonnie also mentors IBCLC candidate students, teaches the Certified Lactation Educator (CLE) course, and offers public speaking on lactation and nutrition-related topics.
Bonnie is committed to giving personalized, affirming care and education to each family, individual, and professional she works with! Supporting families during this critical and emotional time in their lives is such important work. Bonnie promises compassionate, non-judgmental support and information.
Bonnie and her husband Brent, have a 7-year-old son, Finley. They enjoy quality time together playing board games, cooking, traveling, and hiking in as many National Parks as possible.
The mission of Bonnie Knows Breast is to empower people with education to make informed decisions related to their health and the health of their babies. Bonnie supports families of all backgrounds, structures, and identities and believes everyone deserves to be supported in their journey.
The medical community spends a lot of time and energy discussing weight as it relates to health. This message becomes a focus particularly in the postpartum period when people begin to think about “dropping the baby weight”. A frequently shared statement about breastfeeding is that it may cause weight loss. This information can be the driver for some to decide to breastfeed.
Weight stigma is a topic that surrounds our tiny clients as early as in the womb when we talk about delivering a “big baby” or as we focus on growth charts and weight gain for babies which can be a big trigger for the parent who may have a past history of disordered eating. Comments about a baby being “too big” or having reached a certain weight and now needs solid foods sooner are often discussed.
What do our intake forms ask as it relates to weight or past history of eating disorders? How does our office furniture function to seat people comfortably with all body types? How do we communicate to clients about food intake and the impact of lactation, appropriate weight gain for a baby, or the benefits of breastfeeding?
As healthcare professionals, we have to acknowledge our own biases around weight stigma and actively work to change the way we practice to be weight inclusive for the dyad.
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Differentiating Normal Newborn Weight Loss From Breastfeeding Failure
Micaela Notarangelo, PhD, IBCLC, RLC, obtained her IBCLC certification in 2010. She has a private lactation consultant practice in Lerici, Italy and takes a particular interest in everything that concerns breastfeeding science and medicine. From 1992 to 2001, Micaela lived in Japan, where in 1998 she earned a PhD in Economics at Hokkaido University, Sapporo. She also worked as assistant professor at Hokkaido University and Utrecht University. After returning to Italy, she became a La Leche League Leader in 2005 and was the Area Professional Liaison of LLL Italy from 2010 to 2013. In 2017, together with Chiara Toti, IBCLC, Micaela has developed a new two-day course for health care providers about breastfeeding support for babies with lip and/or palate cleft. The course has been held, with the financial support of Aismel, a parents' association, in several major Italian hospitals.
There is increasing concern for the risk of hypernatremic dehydration (HD) in infants breastfeeding poorly, and weight loss (WL) is often considered a key variable in deciding whether to supplement a newborn. However, WL is the net sum of different forces, and it might be difficult to determine which actions will be the most effective in protecting both the baby and breastfeeding. This presentation will review the newest scientific evidence about WL, and by a comparison of the results of previous quantitative studies will provide a more comprehensive framework to interpret weight changes and feeding behaviors that can be suggestive of an increased risk of HD, in order to facilitate the detection of infants who can benefit from additional breastfeeding support and those who might eventually require supplementation. The data confirm that both birth and breastfeeding perinatal practices have influence on WL and the risk of HD, and are therefore important modifiable factors to improve breastfeeding outcomes.
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Disorganized Infant Feeding: Beyond Suck, Swallow, Breathe
Jada Wright Nichols is an Atlanta-based women’s wellness consultant. She graduated from Tennessee State University, with a bachelor’s degree in speech pathology and audiology. She has a master’s degree in occupational therapy and has worked in a variety of rehabilitation settings, across the life-span.
Additionally, she is a massage therapist, lymphedema therapist, holistic nutritionist, birth and postpartum doula, yoga instructor, and international board-certified lactation consultant (IBCLC). She is a lactation consultant at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and the owner of Blossom Health and Maternal Wellness, and Bloom Early Intervention, which provide in-home and virtual services for new and expectant families, as they navigate various aspects of parenting, access, and equity.
Suck swallow breathe coordination is one of the earliest and most meaningful motor milestones of a developing infant. That level of coordination varies between breastfeeding and bottle feeding. Too frequently, if there are any challenges while feeding at the breast, bottle feeding is recommended, often without a complete assessment around the challenge itself. Infant feeding may be disorganized for one of a variety of contributing factors. It is important to be able to identify one or more of those factors, and to facilitate a solution, which may include seeking the insight and intervention of another allied health professional. Honing observation skills, incorporating diagnostic tools, and coordinating feeding assessments and protocols with specialists assist in preserving the initial breastfeeding relationship, with equity.
Disparities in Perinatal Care and Outcomes Among Women With Disabilities: An Urgent Call for Inclusion
Dr. Monika Mitra is the Nancy Lurie Marks Associate Professor of Disability Policy, and Director of the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Her research focuses on the health and wellbeing of people with disabilities and their families. She co-leads the Community Living Policy Center which is aimed at improving policies and practices that advance community living outcomes for people with disabilities and the National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities which is focused on addressing knowledge gaps regarding the needs of parents with diverse disabilities and their families. Dr. Mitra is co-editor-in-chief of the Disability and Health Journal. Prior to joining Brandeis, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
In the last ten years, an emerging body of evidence has documented the disparities in perinatal care, quality, and outcomes of women with disabilities.
This presentation will provide an in-depth examination of the unmet needs and barriers to perinatal care among women with different disabilities. It will highlight disparities in pregnancy and birth outcomes among women with and without disabilities. It will also outline recommendations to women with disabilities who are considering pregnancy and examine the experiences and needs of health care practitioners in providing obstetric care to women with disabilities.
The findings for this presentation are informed by analyses of nationally representative surveys, population-based administrative data, and from interviews with disabled women and obstetric care clinicians from the United States. We will include findings on the perinatal health of women with physical disabilities, women who are deaf and hard of hearing, and women with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
This presentation will shed light on the unmet needs and barriers to care of women with disabilities during pregnancy and childbirth and emphasize the urgent need for policy and practice recommendations to improve perinatal care of women with disabilities.
Does Breastfeeding Protect Maternal Mental Health? The Role of Oxytocin and Stress
Kathleen Kendall-Tackett is a health psychologist and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and the Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women's health. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Editor-in-Chief of two peer-reviewed journals: Clinical Lactation and Psychological Trauma. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association in Health and Trauma Psychology and Past President of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology. Dr. Kendall-Tackett specializes in women's-health research including breastfeeding, depression, trauma, and health psychology, and has won many awards for her work including the 2017 President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Trauma Psychology from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Trauma Psychology. Dr. Kendall-Tackett has authored more than 460 articles or chapters and is author or editor of 38 books.
Topic: Breastfeeding Helps Mothers Overcome the Legacy of Abuse and Adversity: It Makes All the Difference - [View Abstract]
Topic: Burnout, Compassion Fatigue and Self-Care for Members of the Perinatal Team - [View Abstract]
Topic: Burnout, Secondary Trauma, and Moral Injury in Perinatal Care Providers - [View Abstract]
Topic: Does Breastfeeding Protect Maternal Mental Health? The Role of Oxytocin and Stress - [View Abstract]
Topic: Lessons to Learn from Fed Is Best: How Can We Improve Our Care? - [View Abstract]
Topic: Mother-Infant Sleep Location: It's Not as Simple as it Seems - [View Abstract]
Topic: Trauma and Breastfeeding: Working Effectively with Trauma Survivors - [View Abstract]
Topic: What’s New in Postpartum Depression? A Summary of Current Findings - [View Abstract]
Depression research contains many conclusions that appear to contradict each other regarding the role of breastfeeding. For example, breastfeeding lowers the risk of depression, but depression increases the risk that breastfeeding will fail. Moreover, breastfeeding problems increase women's risk of depression. These findings are not as contradictory as they may seem. By understanding the underlying physiological mechanism, we can understand these seemingly paradoxical findings. This presentation will describe the link between the stress and oxytocin systems, and how they relate to both maternal mental health and breastfeeding. When the stress system is upregulated, depression and breastfeeding difficulties follow. Conversely, when oxytocin is upregulated, maternal mental health and breastfeeding rates improve. This talk also includes the role of birth interventions and mother-infant sleep, as well as practical strategies that increase oxytocin.
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Courtney Polk is a registered nurse and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. She is a native of New Orleans but currently resides in Dallas, Texas with her husband and their 2 children. Since graduating from Southern University School of Nursing in 2006, Courtney began her nursing career in labor and delivery and went on to earn a masters in nursing education in 2012. It wasn’t until having her son in 2014, and experiencing breastfeeding for herself that lactation became her focus and passion. Since becoming board certified she has helped countless families in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex area meet or exceed their breastfeeding goals. Courtney is also the current president of the Dallas Lactation Consultant Association.
Donor milk is often an underutilized resource. Human milk donation has happened since the beginning of time through wet nursing and bottles. There are many reasons babies may need extra nutrition that their parents temporarily may not be able to provide. When supplementing becomes necessary donor milk can be a viable and sustainable option. However, many parents they have never heard of it and/or they don't know where to get it. Also, many parents have an abundance of milk and may not know what to do with it. This presentation will focus on how lactation professionals can do a better job of promoting donor milk and thereby promoting exclusive breastfeeding.
Ruth Patterson is Cloud Nine's P I O N E E R & Most Sought Lactation Specialist with 33 years of rich experience - currently practicing at Jayanagar C9, Bangalore-India and a visiting Lactation Consultant with 9 other Cloud Nine branches locally. She also heads the 24 Pan India Cloud Nine Hospitals as the Manager Lactation.
Ruth's 30+ years of rich experience includes maternity, allied health and nursing care, both in rural and urban sector in India & Abroad. Her exclusive 18 years of experience in Lactation services, she has acquired immense practical knowledge in the last decade to identify most critical disorders of mother and babies during breastfeeding stage. She is acclaimed to have expertise in a lesser-known art of re-lactation and induced lactation.
Ruth is known for her ability to identify the most critical issues in Breastfeeding and restore/re-initiate feeds. She is acclaimed for the use of Dynamic Taping (only available at Jayanagar C9) that arrests/prevents breast surgery/abscess. This Dynamic Taping practice, alongside, a Gynecologist, Pediatrician and Physiotherapist at Cloud Nine, is patented.
Ruth is a well sought out person for patient hearing and provides her expert comments in News columns/Media and also delivers guest lectures.
Dr. Shazia Shadab (PT) is the HOD of the Cloud nine physiotherapist department (PAN-India). She has 10 years experience and has been exceptional in her career with constant learning of new skills and improvising in her services.
She has multiple articles published in acclaimed newspapers
and many international certifications affiliated with her name like
pelvic girdle dysfunction, labor mechanism, and has done basic advanced certification in dynamic tapping to name a few. She also has pursued her post-graduation in research methodology after her bachelor's in physiotherapy.
She has always been keen to learn how to progress in a variety of different treatment approaches to find better results. This has helped her and her team to develop an intervention to prevent breast abscess with no surgical approach and has been granted a patent on "a device to promote feeding and scar-free treatment of breast abscess treatment during lactation".
She has worked along with professionals like Dr. Kishore Kumar, Dr. Prakash Kini, and Ruth Patterson, and has treated more than 100 patients suffering from breast abscesses without any surgical intervention. This would be an exceptional resource to help and provide better care.
She has extensive expertise in not only treating but also preventing multiple
musculoskeletal conditions during pregnancy and postpartum. She has been awarded the ABCD (Above and Beyond the Call on Duty) Award for her unwavering and selfless dedication to her patients.
"Lactational breast abscess is a common problem during breastfeeding. Surgical treatment of breast abscess involves maternal child separation and discontinuation of breast feeding. Surgical intervention with its inherent anxiety and probable unwanted side effects can deprive the lactating parent and baby of innumerable benefits. Non-surgical therapeutic modalities can potentially circumvent these problems. Dynamic taping with the help of a physiotherapist is a potential non-surgical intervention. This presentation presents the results of an observational, cohort study which was conducted in 20 consenting mothers with breast abscess attending an out-patient services tertiary maternal and neonatal unit. The mothers were administered two layers of dynamic tape as a single long segment on the breast avoiding the areola in an outward radiating direction to optimize lymphatic flow. Treatment was considered successful if there was resolution of the breast abscess with or without natural oozing."
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Eating Disorders in the Perinatal Client: A Trauma Informed Model
Kristin is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and IBCLC in private practice in central NJ. Her practice specialties are low supply, maternal and infant mental health, and the intersection of ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender in the care of the new family. She has spoken on various lactation, mental health, and equity topics for USLCA, the Lehigh Valley Breastfeeding Association Conference, the Appalachian Breastfeeding Conference, LPPEC, LC in PP, and for LLL of the Garden State. She designed and taught a training course on Mental Health First Aid for Perinatal Providers. She has been a featured speaker on several lactation related podcasts.
She is the mother of two children who nursed full term despite maternal IGT, and who are now 16 and 13. She is an anti racist LGBT+ activist, a member of transformative works fandoms, and makes fighting for a better world part of her daily life.
As lactation professionals, we see clients who are experiencing many challenges during the perinatal period. Clients with eating disorders are uniquely at risk, as are their babies. This presentation will educate the perinatal professional about how eating disorders present in the childbearing year and beyond. It will explore the connection between trauma and disordered eating, and teach how to be a trauma informed provider for eating disordered clients. It will discuss the specific and unique challenges the person with an eating disorder may have during lactation, including postpartum body image, elimination diets, and provider bias. The learner will gain the skills needed to screen for disordered eating and provide culturally humble and appropriate referral for congruent care.
Rania Abdou is a Pediatrics and neonatology consultant at Faculty of medicine, Ain shams university where she teaches Pediatrics and neonatology courses. She earned a Diploma in the clinical nutrition from the European society for clinical nutrition and metabolism. Dr. Rania is also a certified international lactation consultant since 2013. She has dedicated much of her time to the improvement of breastfeeding practice between Egyptian women. Previously, she worked as a clinical director of the neonatal intensive care unit of ain shams university pediatric hospital and vice-director of the pediatrics department at the ain shams specialized university hospital.
The commonest reason of interrupted exclusive breastfeeding is assumption of insufficient breastmilk. Fenugreek has been traditionally used by Egyptian women to increase milk supplementation. However, this practice has not been scientifically evaluated yet. We elucidated fenugreek-tea effect on expressed breast milk quantity by a Comparative study on 2 groups of healthy mothers according to fenugreek consumption whom baby was admitted to Ain shams University NICU for more than 2 weeks and expressed breastmilk using manual breast pump divided into. Results showed earlier increase in mean breastmilk-volume in fenugreek group. Significant difference of pumped breastmilk quantity between groups at day 3 & 8 where fenugreek group showed higher volume yet at day 15 the net daily volume showed no significant difference between both groups. We concluded that fenugreek consumption may affect earlier stages of lactogenesis so can be used for satisfaction and reassurance in those stages.
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Effect of the Spray Drying Process, High Pressures, and Radiation on the Nutritional Quality of Human Milk
Dr. Blanca Aguilar Uscanga is a Biochemical Engineer in Food Science and has a Masters in Food Science. She graduated from the Institute Technologic of Veracruz (ITV) México. She completed her doctoral studies in the specialty of Biotechnology at the National Institute of the Sciences Appliqués of Toulouse in France.
She is currently a full-time research professor (since 2006) at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Exactas e Ingenierías (CUCEI) de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Dr. Aguilar Uscanga is adjunct professor to the Department of Pharmacobiology, where she teaches courses of Applied Microbiology, Biotechnology and Food Science to undergraduate and PhD students.
She is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico recognized by CONACYT, with level 2. The research areas are: Food Biotechnology and Microbiology, which cover different areas of research such as: Obtaining bioactive compounds and metabolites of industrial importance through of microorganisms, production and development of functional foods, fermented beverages, probiotics, prebiotics and food safety.
She has international collaborations with the Institute Armand Frappier, Canada and the Institut sur la nutrition et les aliments fonctionnels (INAF) in Québec. Currently she is member of INRS and has an honorable mention of “Professeure associée” provided by the INRS- the Institute Armand Frappier in Laval, Canada.
Human milk is the first food that the newborn receives and provides all the nutrients necessary for its growth. In order to feed children with breastfeeding problems, Human Milk Banks (BLH) were implemented, which conserve this food through pasteurization and freezing processes. Because human milk is very perishable, this work will present some results obtained on spray drying, high hydrostatic pressures, and UV radiation in human milk, in order to preserve and avoid loss of nutrients in this food, as well as offer a new alternative to the BLH for its conservation.
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