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World Breastfeeding Week 2013 - Enhancing Peer Support for Breastfeeding Success

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This year's World Breastfeeding Week is highlighting the importance of breastfeeding peer counselors in optimizing the breastfeeding success of new and experienced mothers. With little more than half of all mothers exclusively breastfeeding past one week (1) , peer support is critical for increasing our population's health. Breastfeeding is important for the health of both mothers and babies. Breastfeeding helps a baby stay healthy and research shows that increased length and exclusivity of breastfeeding can decrease a baby's risk of contracting a number of illnesses such as otitis media (ear infections) and gastroenteritis, or dying from SIDS. The benefits of breastfeeding extend into childhood and beyond by decreasing the risk of childhood obesity, diabetes (type 1 & 2), and leukemia. For the mother, breastfeeding helps to protect against breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and type 2 diabetes. (2) "Compared with breastfed infants, formula-fed infants face higher ris...
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Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology ~ Healing Birth Trauma in Babies

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I recently responded to a post on a Facebook parenting page, the mother wanted to know what she could do to help her 3 month old daughter heal from her birth. I encouraged her to look into the field of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology (PPN) and even mentioned a few names of leading practitioners in the field. After recommending this, I began my own search to actually see what materials were available to parents who want to help their baby heal from a stressful or traumatic birth. This is when I truly realized that there is almost nothing currently available to guide parents in supporting their baby through a healing process. Most of what I found encouraged parents to seek clinical counseling from someone who specializes in PPN and I would encourage you to do this as well, for babies with severe trauma or residual issues from their prenatal, birth or postpartum experience. But here's the thing, PPN is hardly recognized and professionals that specialize in it are still few and far b...
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They said WHAT!? Do you know what YOUR Doctor Believes about Birth?

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What your pregnancy and birth care provider believes about birth WILL directly influence your birth experience. Whether it is not feeling supported because your doctor doesn't believe women can give birth without intervention; having your trust in yourself, your body and your baby undermined because the doctor is constantly searching for a sign of something wrong with the pregnancy or labor; or, the unhelpful pressure to just accept the epidural, or schedule the induction, you've waited too long for that baby (and they have a vacation coming up). An Obstetrician is trained as a surgeon. Trained to handle complications and emergencies during pregnancy and birth. ...but the majority of births will occur without complication. So what good does it do to have the majority of women attended and cared for by a surgeon? Especially a surgeon who doesn't believe birth works, without their interventions, most of the time!? It does us absolutely NO GOOD. In fact, it is the opposit...
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