Many of the skills and tools used at Teaching Babies to Nurse are nontraditional. For example, I would tell you:
deep latch doesn't matter
pull a baby away from the breast to reduce pinching pain
sometimes you have to relax a baby's feet to help their suck
Thanks to a solid network of supportive colleagues/friends I am able to share this unique set of lactation consulting techniques in a workshop I'm offering every few months to "share some of the magic!", which I am super-excited to do. PS. It's not actually magic, but some solid advanced lactation support techniques.
READING INFANT BODIES, DIASSEMBLING INFANT SUCK: TEACHING BABIES TO NURSE
Babies instinctively draw milk from their parent's body and into their own. We have a growing set of literature demonstrating what an effective suck is, but babies don't always do what the textbooks say they should. In order to progress from an ineffective suck to an effective suck we have to disassemble what the baby is doing, find the root cause, and use that as a pivot point to guide them toward new skills.
In this workshop, we will use experiential techniques to practice how to use intuition and our own experience being human to understand and address nursing couplets. We will learn about how the underlying musculature and bony structures of the face, head, and body can affect the way a baby approaches nursing. We will look at how infants recruit muscles from all over their bodies to manage their breastfeeding environment; how to read infant faces to understand what mechanisms they are using both on the breast and off; how to read a body at rest and in action for areas of tension and muscle overuse. Lastly, we will learn how to address what we find through a unique set of clinical techniques specific to addressing compensatory muscle use so that we can move babies from dysfunction to function.
Here is a link to the upcoming Workshops - September 16, 2022 is almost sold out, and registration is now available for January 25, 2023!
What we are finding is that, maybe because some of the techniques are counter-intuitive to what we learn as standard practice for lactation consultants, sometimes more than a workshop is needed. I'm committed to teaching others how to apply these techniques because they effectively address our toughest breastfeeding challenges, which helps breastfeeding humans overall. So, in addition to workshops, I am also offering mentorship opportunities.
Here is a link to mentorship opportunities.
And finally, if you'd like to read about others who have walked this path, you can take a look at this blogpost.