Essential Communication Skills for Lactation Professionals

Cynthia Good, MS Clinical Psychology, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Clinical Counselor, author, consultant, and internationally recognized speaker. She is the Director of LifeCircle Consulting, LLC and is Certified in Acute Traumatic Stress Management. She is based in the Seattle, Washington, USA area, where she formerly served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University where she taught counseling skills and is a therapist at Sandbox Therapy Group where she works with children, adults, and families. Cynthia has a strong interest in the emerging field of lactational psychology. She brings the evidence and insights of psychology and lactation consulting to her presentations, providing information and teaching skills that are essential to understanding and effectively responding to the complex psychosocial realities of families living in diverse contexts. The focus of her presentations includes communication skills and counseling techniques for perinatal care providers; equity, diversity, and inclusion; infant feeding rhetoric; perinatal mental health; perinatal loss, grief, and trauma; ethics; serving as an expert witness in lactation-related court cases; cultural competence and humility; vitamin D; and more.

With over 25 years’ experience as a relationship counsellor, parents’ group facilitator, mental health educator, partner and mum, Elly Taylor has become an internationally known parenthood preparation and perinatal relationship expert and the award-winning author of Becoming Us. Elly’s passion is preparing parents for a happy and healthy family—at any stage in their parenthood journey, and especially in a challenging world. Her Becoming Us approach includes fathers and partners in all aspects of pregnancy, birth and beyond, harnesses the attachment bond between couples to stabilise them through the life changes and challenges of parenthood and links both parents into community services to support the mental, emotional and relational wellbeing of the whole family.

Elly has served as an advisor for numerous university research projects and her ground-breaking Becoming Us developmental framework has now become a comprehensive multi-disciplinary education and professional training and courses for parents. In a full circle moment, Elly recently trained midwives, allied health and therapy professionals in her local community and now Becoming Us Nest Building Sessions are preparing expectant parents in the hospitals where her children were born. Elly lives in Sydney, Australia with her firefighter husband, their three kidults and an abundance of pets.

Tanya Singleton is a registered nurse with over 35 years of experience in Maternal-Child nursing. More than half of that career was as a Labor and Delivery nurse, certified in High-Risk Perinatal nursing. Tanya is also an IBCLC lactation consultant and Lamaze childbirth educator. She retired as United States Army Nurse Corp officer in 2003 and began working in private practice as a lactation consultant and childbirth educator. She has run several community non-profits in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area that dealt with issues related to women’s and children’s health promotion and illness prevention. Tanya is committed to quality education and lifelong learning, and has taught maternal-child and pediatric nursing to students in the Rappahannock Region of Virginia, sharing her various clinical anecdotes in classroom and in labs. She is an advocate for Perinatal Grief Support and early detection of post-partum depression. She is owner and proprietor of The Baby Whisperer, providing in-home support in childbirth education, breastfeeding and parenting. She is the mother of a blended family of five adult children and Nana to three.

I am the mother of three breastfed children. Certified as an IBCLC in 2007, the next year, in 2008, setup the first IBCLC clinic in the medical center in Taiwan. As the President of the Chinese Lactation Consultant Association from 2015 till now. I have been teaching in the university for 30 years and as a part-time associate professor in the Department of Midwife & Women Health, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Science, Taiwan now. After I retired from the university, I fund and as the CEO of WELL International Co., aims to promote the three-stages certification of profession lactation support competence.

Lesley Everest has been practising as a birth, postpartum, and end-of-life doula in Montreal over the last 26 years. She is the founder of MotherWit Doula Care and MotherWit Doula Training. Lesley's professional background in many forms of somatic/emotional support therapies and inter-spiritual ministry informs her work as a teacher of human resilience , as do the births and parenting of her own four kids, and her experience of healing from cancer. She has learned over the years that a good birth and early parenting experience is less about goals being met and more about feeling safe and respected. Lesley believes that the journey into family-hood matters for all members, serving as a transformational event that has the power to shape early parenting and the next generations. Lesley's diplomatic and collaborative nature has made her a sought after speaker in the North American birth and parenting conference circuits, as well as a facilitator of workshops geared towards soft skills building for medical care providers. Lesley is resourced by long walks in nature, late night dancing with friends to ‘80’s music, and visits to the spa.