Purpose of the Symposium
1) Discuss the benefits of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI) for hospitals, clinics, mothers, infants, and clinicians
2) Provide a forum for discussion among nurses, doctors, doulas, childbirth educators, midwives, administrators and others on the challenges and opportunities of implementing mother-friendly care in the clinical or hospital setting.
3) Provide a forum for dissemination of evidence-based best practices for maternity care.
4) Support clinics, hospitals and community-based programs in developing plans of action to shift the thinking in their organizations towards mother-friendly care and develop multidisciplinary coordinated networks of maternity care providers.
5) Practitioners and students of maternity care will obtain an objective understanding of the collision of worldviews and belief systems when the medical and midwifery models of maternity care intersect.
6) Participants will describe how the perinatal community as a whole can best collaborate to provide optimal care for mothers and infants based on the principals of the MFCI and the evidence-based practices available as outlined in the 10 steps of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI).
Principles of the MFCI are:MFCI Steps and Principles this session refers to:
Principles
Steps
Step 7. Encourages all mothers and families, including those with sick or premature newborns or infants with congenital problems, to touch, hold, breastfeed, and care for their babies to the extent compatible with their conditions.
Step 10.
Strives to achieve the WHO-UNICEF “Ten Steps of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative” to promote successful breastfeeding:
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
In this session, Kittie Frantz, RN, CPNP-PC, a world-renown expert on breastfeeding, will summarize the research on co-sleeping conducted by James McKenna Ph.D. at the sleep research lab at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, as well as other research which supports the tenet that “babies should never sleep alone”. Drawing upon Suzanne Colson’s paradigm of Biological Nurturing TM, and research by Dr. Nils Bergman on Kargaroo Mother Care and skin-to-skin contact, Ms. Frantz will summarize why practitioners that work with families should counterbalance the negative information that families often receive on the dangers of co-sleeping with evidence-based information on the potential benefits of Co-sleeping, and give safety guidelines for families who make informed decisions to co-sleep with their infants and young children.
