The Midwives' Cauldron

In this episode I take Rachel and you into the world of underhand marketing tactics going on right under our noses from the commercial milk formula (CMF) industry. 

In Feburary 2023 the Lancet and WHO released a new 3 part series discussing the marketing of CMF. Rachel really did wonder if this would be of any interest to our listeners and I promised her that within a few minutes her knickers would be in a twist ... and they were!  

This is not a discussion about whether formula milk should be used this is a look at the often horrifying goings-on that are, in a large part, leading to women all over the globe feeling robbed  of their breastfeeding wishes, hopes and experiences. 

 In this episode you will hear about:

•  Who first patented infant formula and why.
• How we are all being subversively targeted with underhand tactics. 
• How the CMF industry raises profits by casting doubt on mothers milk and pathologising normal baby behaviours: how often babies breastfeed or typical crying which is OK. 
• How much the CMF industry is worth 
• The impact the CMF industry marketing has on the health costs for individual countires. 
• Political lobbying
• Tax evasion
• And we lay it out - is there any difference between a tin of formula  which costs 9 or 28 and where to get safe information about formula. 
• We discuss whether there is a need for toddler and growing up milks.
• And we take a look at the estimated cost of unpaid work from breastfeeding. 
• Don't fret, we leave you with some actionable places to go from here!

LINKS
The Lancet series and webinar

Short explanation video about The Lancet and WHO series 

First steps nutrition

 Breastfeeding and formula supplementation – the traps and escapes - podcast episode 

Want more confidence in breast

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Rhea is a former PE teacher turned childbirth educator, and counsellor and feels privileged to have attended more than a thousand births in hospitals and home settings as a birth attendant as well as connecting with many more women, their partners and support people during birth preparation workshops and personal birth counselling sessions. 

Rhea has spoken extensively around Australia and internationally and is the author of two books – ‘Birth with Confidence: savvy choices for normal birth’  and the most recent ‘Beyond the Birth Plan: getting real about pain and power’.

Rheas thoughtful, gentle voice takes us on a look back over the world of birth from the past 40 years from England to Australia.  

How Rheas home births led to her passion into childbirth education and birth attendant work.

 How home births were parties back in the days! 

Rhea talks with us about how sadly, in more than forty years of birth work, she’s witnessed an unprecedented rise in unnecessary medical interventions and the development of a culture that, rather than supporting women to birth naturally – physiologically -, is actually undermining them.

We discuss the f&@k1ng epidural, as Rhea terms it, and how she feels it has hijacked what labour and birth discomfort means. The ‘thank goodness births’ and what this means for society.

And we discuss the importance of what it is we ‘choose’ to focus on when providing childbirth education. Attachment styles and how that impacts how we go into birth. How shame plays a role in how we may or may not ask for help.

Rhea leaves us with an oxytocin fuelled story from her book and makes Katie cry! 

LINKS
Rhea Dempsey website, courses, books 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

On this episode of the Midwives Cauldron, it’s just me and Rachel hanging out and stirring the pot discussing vaginal examinations (VE's)!

• We take a step back in history to look at how midwives originally used vaginal examination during labour and for what purpose
• We look at current guidelines 
• Rachel goes on her history trail for us to find the original research which guidelines are based on
• We talk about said research, the risks of vaginal examinations 
• Language midwives could use to discuss VEs in preparation for labour
• The importance of talking about vaginal examinations during the antenatal phase
• How mainstream media influences us into thinking that vaginal examinations are an important part of our labour
• How medical birth needs a different assessment from physiological birth
• I ask whether there should ever be a timeline set in length for a labour 
• We question how students can learn the skill of vaginal examinations if we “shouldn’t be doing as many as we are” 
• And Rachel teaches me the word furtle! 

All this and more on this episode of The Midwives’ Cauldron

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Professor Donna Geddes is the director of the Geddes Hartmann Human Lactation Research Group. Based in Perth, Australia, the group is made up of innovative and dedicated scientists and students that have a passion for developing measurements of lactation and breastfeeding and then applying them to make a difference to clinicians and breastfeeding families. The group makes a point of not only publishing their findings in scientific journals but spreading their information via free online articles and social media on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In.

Donna has a medical imaging background with an emphasis in ultrasound imaging. She has integrated this modality into many of the group’s studies providing a ‘window’ to different physiological processes during lactation. If you have listened to our previous podcast where I have spoken about the in quotes discovery of the breast anatomy - this is Donna! She showed the world the true anatomy of the lactating breast and could visualize how milk ejection occurs through her ultrasound techniques.  Her findings have attracted much international attention and she is often requested to speak at both International and National Scientific Meetings. She is the Secretary for the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation.

In this episode

·      the tools and technology we currently use and what we could be seeing in the future  

·      using technology to identify if milk has come in or if there's inflammation in the breast

·      how to accurately test milk volumes

·      the controversial topic of test weighing

·      identifying lactation issues correctly- sucking and milk transfer and/or milk supply problems

·      nipple pain and nipple shields

·     and we look at extremely high suck vacuum levels and effects on breastfeeding

LINKS
Prof Donna Geddes
Geddes Hartmann Human Lactation Research Group
Symposium

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

In this episode of the cauldron we have Dr. Sharon Blackie; award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist. Her highly acclaimed books, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of myth, fairy tales and folk traditions to the personal, cultural and environmental problems we face today.

As well as writing five books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted, and her new book Hagitude, her writing has appeared in anthologies, collections and in several international media outlets – among them the Guardian, the Irish Times, the i and the Scotsman. Her books have been translated into several languages, and she has been interviewed by the BBC, US public radio and other broadcasters on her areas of expertise. Her awards include the Roger Deakin Award, and a Creative Scotland Writer’s Award.

Sharon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has taught and lectured at several academic institutions, Jungian organisations, retreat centres and cultural festivals around the world. Her TEDx talk on the mythic imagination  can be viewed here.

During the episode

• We delve deep into the world of wise and influential women in native mythology and what this means for navigating peri-menopause and elderhood. 
• We ask Sharon what we can learn from the myths embedded in our cultures. 
• We take a look at the profession of midwifery as traditionally midwives were the older women, not mothers themselves or past the mothering stage.  We talk about how it is this group of women that can be leading the changes in the birth world. Not leaving it only to the younger midwives to fight. 
• We discuss the overarching patriarchal messages which purport that menopause is an ‘illness’ to be fixed, cured, or masked so we can continue to look like young maidens.
• And we hear about the power of elderhood, and what we can learn even if we are still in our mother years or just coming into perimenopause.

LINKS:
Dr Sharon Blackie
Ha

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

In this episode we talk to Prof Helen Ball. Helen is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre. Helen studies infant sleep and the parent-infant sleep relationship from a biosocial perspective. Broadly defined, her research examines sleep ecology, of infants, young children and their parents. This encompasses attitudes and practices regarding infant sleep, behavioural and physiological monitoring of infants and their parents during sleep, infant sleep development, and the discordance between cultural sleep preferences and biological sleep needs.

She pioneers the translation of academic research on infant sleep into evidence for use by parents and healthcare staff via Basis-- the Baby Sleep Information Source website. She serves as Associate Editor of the journal Sleep Health, and is on the Ediotial Board of the Journal of Human Lactation. She is Chair of the Lullaby Trust Scientific Committe, and an elected Board Member of the International Society for the Study and Prevention of Infant Deaths (ISPID).

In this episode we discuss:

·       Where on earth did the myths come from which tell us we will do harm to our baby if we pick them up too much - Rachel tells what horrendous thing she was told with her first baby

·       Helen takes us on an anthropological look at motherhood and infancy 

·       We discuss the old, current and quite frankly shocking SIDS safety messaging around the globe – Using a meat cleaver in bed with a baby to shock you out of bed sharing! 

·       And find out how Helen played an incredibly crucial role ensuring that the UK actually discuss safe bed sharing with parents.

LINKS:

Basis-- the Baby Sleep Information Source  www.basisonline.org.uk

Infancy & Sleep Centre: www.dur.ac.uk/disc

Prof Helen Ball  https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/h-l-ball/ 

Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helen-Ball 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Dr. Kathleen Kendall-Tackett is a health psychologist and International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant, and the CEO of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women's health. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Psychological Trauma and was Founding Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Lactation. 

Dr. Kendall-Tackett specializes in women's-health research including breastfeeding, depression, trauma, and health psychology, and has won many awards for her work including the 2019 President’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Trauma Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Dr. Kendall-Tackett has authored more than 490 articles or chapters and is author or editor of 41 books. Her most recent books include Breastfeeding Doesn’t Need to Suck (2022) and Women’s Mental Health Across the Lifespan (2017). Her 41st book, Depression in New Mothers, 4th Edition is in press.

Dr Kendall Tackett discusses with us not only a vast range of topics specific to her work and new book but also some big and confronting topics in this episode.  

 A warning: Dr Kendall-Tackett discusses early in the podcast about her research and work with women who have experienced sexual assault. 

In this episode we delve in to:

• Postnatal anxiety and guilt 
• The power of oxytocin, a mother’s “Spidey senses” and the vulnerability during the early days
• Sleep, mental health and breastfeeding
• Postpartum depression 
• Placenta encapsulation and it’s potential effects on milk supply. 
• Secondary trauma in midwives and doulas and birth partners 
• Burn out in midwives - shift based vs continuity of carer model 
• How Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) affects adult health 
• How women who have experienced sexual abuse prefer to engage with breastfeeding and what the research is showing.  

LINKS :

Course Burnout among perinatal workers 

Book

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

James Bourton is a registered midwife who works in an NHS continuity of care midwifery model within in Wales, UK. James describes himself as a home birth midwife, experienced in physiological birth, working autonomously as a practitioner with the support of a small midwifery team. James is passionate about providing women and families with individualised care that works for them in a way that they can achieve positive outcomes during pregnancy, birth and beyond. James advocates for women to know and understand that they do have rights in birth, that they always have choices, and that they can say no! James feels that a continuity of care model is the way forward in midwifery (or the way backwards, as this is how it always was) as the outcomes speak for themselves. 

In this episode we shine a light on midwifery in a COC service in Wales. We discuss with James about working as a midwife who gets to follow women and their families through the entire continuum; pregnancy to postpartum. 

We ask james about working as a male midwife, the importance of making strong relationships, the joys of being the ‘local’ midwife in the community, on-calls and shift work, the importance of students getting to experience this way of working, and we talk about the real magic of working in traditional midwifery.  

James leaves us with a beautiful story from a midwives perspective.

This is the episode to start off the new year with a boost of oxytocin. 

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

In this episode Rachel & Katie discuss all things listening to babies during labour. 
Rachel walks us through:

• The Herstory of listening to the baby’s heart rate during labour. 
• The interesting and scary history of the inventer of the pinard trumpet. 
• Rachel’s “heart beat” impression! 
• Rachel’s ‘under water’ pinard story! 
• We discuss pinards and doppler listening devices. #bringbackthepinnard  
• What is the evidence for fetal heart rate monitoring in labour. 
• The current guidelines on intermittent auscultation. And the one piece of evidence a lot of guidelines are based off. 
• The normal and expected changes in a full term healthy baby’s heart rate during labour.
• Rachel gives tips on how to navigate working in the hospital environment with consented or declined auscultations. 
• Katie looks for sponsorship from Kendall mint cake, you have to listen to know what we’re on about with this one! 
• And last but by no means least, CTG monitoring and what the research says about outcomes for women and infants.

LINKS:
Rachel's blog post
  

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.

Welcome to this episode of The Cauldron! We have the wonderful Lyndsey Hookway in the bubbling pot with us today. 
Lyndsey is an experienced paediatric nurse, children’s public health nurse, IBCLC, researcher, responsive sleep/parenting advocate, and the author of 6 books. She has worked with children and families for more than 20 years within in-patient paediatrics, paediatric ambulatory care, NICU, and the community. 

Lyndsey is a PhD researcher at Swansea University, exploring the needs and challenges of medically complex breastfed infants and children. In 2019 she founded the Breastfeeding the Brave project to raise awareness of the unique lactation needs of sick children in the paediatric setting. Lyndsey is the co-founder and clinical director of the Holistic Sleep Coaching program and Thought Rebellion. She is a respected international speaker and also provides regular training, advocacy and consultancy to both NHS and private organisations.

 We get to talk all things infant sleep in this episode! 

• how breastfeeding is often the scapegoat in the infant sleep scenario 
• how challenging it can be to give sleep information and support when we are not provided with good education on it
• common myths of infant sleep advice
• the sudo-science available online
• what the current science is saying
• how we can effectively, gently and with safe evidence implement sleep support into our own practice 

 LINKS: 

Support the show - link below
Rate and review - link below
Katie and Rachel's websites - link below

Instagram: @lyndsey_hookway

Facebook: @LyndseyHookway

Twitter: @FeedSleepBond

www.lyndseyhookway.com 

www.thoughtrebellion.com 

www.holisticsleepcoaching.com

www.breastfeedingthebrave.com 

Mentioned in the show:

A method to soothe and promote sleep in crying infants utilizing the transport response – Research paper (open access) 

 Leah Kuypers. Zones of regulation

Head over to The Latch Revolution Podcast to continue the conversations with Katie James and Johanna Sargeant, IBCLCs

Click here if you would like to find out more about Decoding The Suck  and advance your clinical skills in lactation and suck assessment.

Support the show

Resources & Support

Get Katie’s Milk Supply Confidence Kit — a free resource to help pregnant women, new parents and professionals feel calm, informed, and confident about breastfeeding.
👉 Download here

⭐Leave a Review
Enjoying the podcast? Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Want More from Katie and Rachel?
– Katie’s website
– Rachel’s website

🎶 Music by Joseph McDade


Disclaimer
The information shared in this podcast is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional regarding individual health concerns.

The Midwives’ Cauldron podcast does not guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the information provided and accepts no liability for any loss or harm arising from reliance on this content.