Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Road Trip: Day Four

Second day of conference.

The day began with keynote speaker, Suzanne Colson, of Biological Nurturing fame. I was particularly keen to hear her speak, as I a am a fan of Christina Smillie's Baby-Led Attachment approach to feeding and was interested to hear Suzanne's approach, which complements, but is different to, Christina's: I attended a one-day workshop with Christina earlier this year.

I found Suzanne's "technique" a little less flexible than Christina's, as she promotes a laid-back position for mothers, while Chistina tends to result in this position as a consequence of the mother's response to her baby following his instincts. I am a little cautious about another "technique" for attachment, as I have seen others dominate mother's over the past decades. However, parts of Suzannes approach do resonate and I will incorporate these into the information I pass on to mothers.


It was very interesting to hear Jane Child present on behalf of Colin Binns on the new Dietary Guidelines, about to be released for comment. I can't find them online, they were to be released yesterday, but we were all encouraged to read and comment.

I was able to hear Jane speak again in a workshop later, about strategies being used to engage fathers in supporting breastfeeding and also hear about some great work being done by our own state government in Victoria.

There was so much more, it is hard to gather all my thoughts together, but the networking is always the best part of these conferences.


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