Professor Amy Brown is based in the Department of Public Health, Policy and Social Sciences at
Swansea University in the UK where she directs the new research centre ‘LIFT’ : Lactation, Infant
Feeding and Translation. With a background in psychology, she first became interested in the
increasingly global issue of low breastfeeding rates
when breastfeeding her first baby. Three babies and a PhD later she has spent the last fifteen
years exploring psychological, cultural and societal barriers to breastfeeding, with an emphasis
on understanding how we can shift our perception of breastfeeding from an individual
mothering issue, to a wider public health problem.
Professor Brown has published over 100 papers exploring the barriers women face in feeding
their baby during the first year. She is author of ‘Breastfeeding Uncovered’, ‘Why starting solids
matters’, ‘The positive breastfeeding book’, ‘Informed is best’, ‘Why breastfeeding grief and
trauma matter’, ‘A guide to support breastfeeding for the medical profession’ and the soon to
be published ‘Let’s talk about the first year of parenting’.
Promoting breastfeeding as protective of both maternal and infant health is a central role or
governments, health professionals and breastfeeding advocates. Talking about breastfeeding
difficulties and why ingrained barriers must be tackled is essential to ensuring the situation
changes for future mothers. However, sometimes it feels as if we are caught in a vicious
circle; we must talk about breastfeeding as our rates are low and many women wish they had
breastfed for longer, yet discussing these issues is often criticized as causing pain.
This talk will present findings from a large research study which explored the experiences of
over 2000 women who could not breastfeed for as long as they wanted, presenting their
lasting emotions from their experience alongside their ideas for how we could promote
breastfeeding in ways that cause them the least pain. The concept of negative breastfeeding
emotions displaying as psychological grief or trauma for a subgroup of women will be
discussed, alongside the factors that they felt made their experience or feelings worse.
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