Breastfeeding and the Breastfeeding Mother - BREASTFEEDING TASK FORCE OF GREATER LOS ANGELES

Health care providers and public health officials are telling mothers not to sleep with their babies. How is this impacting mothers' behavior? This presentation will show new data from the Survey of Mothers' Sleep and Fatigue. Where do babies start and finish the night, what are mothers are telling their friends, family and health care providers, and how do they feel about their sleep arrangements?

Does nighttime breastfeeding elevate the risk of postpartum depression? We will examine the relationship between feeding method, where babies sleep and maternal fatigue. Preliminary analyses reveal that breastfeeding mothers report less fatigue than their formula-feeding or mixed-feeding counterparts.

Recent research has revealed that depression is associated with systemic inflammation, specifically, the increase in proinflammatory cytokines. Common experiences of new motherhood, sleep deprivation, postpartum pain, and psychological trauma, also cause inflammation levels to rise. This session will describe the inflammatory response and also show why breastfeeding and anti-inflammatory treatments protect maternal mental health.

The negative effects of postpartum depression, on both mother and baby, are too serious to ignore. There are a number of treatments for depression, including a wide range of non-pharmacologic treatments. This session summarizes research findings on various therapies and also describes the implications of each for breastfeeding.

Faculty:
Katherine Kendall-Tackett, PhD, IBCLC
Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Texas Tech University School of Medicine;
Affiliate Research Associate Professor of Psychology, Family Research Lab/Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire;
Acquisitions Editor at Hale Publishing and Associate Editor of the journal Psychological Trauma; and
Author or editor of 19 books in the fields of trauma, womens health, depression, and breastfeeding, including Depression in New Mothers, Non-Pharmacologic Treatments for Depression in New Mothers, and Breastfeeding Made Simple (co-authored with Nancy Mohrbacher).