This is a great webinar about how mom and babies are biologically designed to be a unit. In my lingo, that unit is a tree with the fruit still attached. This is the core of tree of life mothering. Babies are designed by Heavenly Father to stay attached to moms until they are ready to self-wean, which our culture tries to force close to birth but really is biologically supposed to happen later. I am not going to give an age, I will just say that it’s best for the baby’s physical and emotional health to wean later than earlier. You as a mom are the expert on your baby and know when it’s best to wean. A mom is the only one who can give the gift of her own milk to her baby and be a tree of life to that baby, so please feel honored about your ability to breastfeed, instead of constrained. Your baby is only a baby for a short time.

It is presented by Dr. Christina (Tina) Smillie, a mom, lactation consultant, and physician. I like that the presenter shows works of art from Western art and mentions the first family, Adam and Eve.

Watch the webinar here https://ics.adobeconnect.com/_a1122382289/p5en7pugmb7/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal.

Here is what the GOLD (Global Online Lactation Discussion) website says about her and the webinar.

The GOLD Team is thrilled to present our Keynote Address on April 24, 2012, by Christina Smillie, MD, FAAP, IBCLC FABM: Keep it Simple: What mothers and babies already know, how they think, and why this matters! Starting with a bit of recent history, we’ll look at how western observers began to recognize and celebrate the innate mother-baby behaviours that facilitate breastfeeding. In other mammals, these behaviours have long been termed the mammalian feeding sequence, and now, in humans, they are variously described with such language as self-attachment, baby-led breastfeeding, biological nurturing, and the breast crawl.  Mother-baby interactions are key, and this is where we’ll get into how mothers and babies think, why mothers are so foggy and confused postpartum, and why this is actually a good thing. All of this has huge implications for how we communicate with mothers, and suggests some profound changes in how we support mothers and babies as they learn to breastfeed.

An American physician board certified both as a pediatrician (1983) and as a lactation consultant (1995), Dr. Smillie founded Breastfeeding Resources in 1996 in Stratford, Connecticut, USA, the first private medical practice in the USA limited to the specialty of breastfeeding medicine. A member of the (international) Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine since its 1995 inception, she was honored with Fellowship in 2002, and has served two terms on ABM’s Board of Directors. She continues to serve as a member of La Leche League International’s Health Advisory Council. Speaking around the world about the physiology, pathophysiology and clinical management of a wide variety of breastfeeding issues, always stressing the role of the motherbaby as a single psychoneurobiological system, Dr. Smillie emphasizes the importance of the innate instincts underlying both maternal and infant competence. Her video, Baby-Led Breastfeeding: the Mother-Baby Dance, available in 7 languages, illustrates these instinctive behaviours in mothers and babies learning to breastfeed.