Holistic Parenting Network

10/06/2024

The North Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition is urgently seeking 20 Infant Feeding Specialists to assist at the Lilac Birth Center in Asheville, NC starting tomorrow, October 5, 2024 and on an ongoing basis. Specialists will help provide support to families affected by the hurricane by ensuring safe i...

09/15/2022

Prepare for a night of Edutainment, an AMAZING Village-inspired menu, and dancing! Let's celebrate our ROCKSTAR mommas! Enjoy a raffle, receive some prizes and so much more! I can't wait to see you in your Best African Attire and don't forget to dress in Red, Yellow, or Purple to enter the best-dressed contest!!!
Oh, what a night!!!

09/09/2022

Hospitals have sent out warnings about counterfeit car seats they've seen during safety checks. Here's what fake car seats are and how to avoid accidentally buying one.

05/21/2022

Don't let anyone gaslight you into reframing the gross negligence of our perinatal healthcare policies. This problem is not the result of parental choice in infant feeding methods. It is the consequence of too many policies bought by lobbyists and paid for with our tax dollars while infant feeding specialists have been scrambling to help support over 80% of all birthing parents who want to nurse their children, but come up against inhumane parental leave "protections" and primary care providers who neglect to refer to skilled IBCLCS but instead inform them that they simply can't nurse... when those providers have are not routinely trained to support breast/chest feeding. It's not a choice when you have nowhere else to turn.

03/31/2022

💗 Public breastfeeding shouldn’t be controversial. Even though public breastfeeding is legal in many places (including all 50 states in the US), many people still experience shame and stigma when trying to breastfeed publicly.

No one should have to hide in a public bathroom in order to feed their hungry baby. Parents and their children have the right to feed and be fed anywhere, anytime. ✨

I want to be clear here that there should also be NO moral judgment given to how people choose to feed their children. Formula and breastfeeding are both valid. You have to do what’s best for you, your baby and your life 💗

Image description: Digital illustration of a Black mother breastfeeding an infant. She appears as a goddess, and is shirtless aside from a sheer cape with constellations. The text reads, ‘normalize public breastfeeding.’

03/30/2022

03/07/2022

Birth and breast/chest feeding have been a part of history since the dawn of mammalian existence, bringing various species of mammal together in a profoundly simple, empathetic way. After all, what...

02/23/2022

A key assumption of behaviorism is the idea that you can ascertain what is happening internally from what we see externally.

The problem is that it's utter bu****it.

For all the positive reasons we think we see behaviours, there are an equal number (or more) of negative possibilities. We simply cannot assume that what we see comes about because of something positive, especially if we haven't acted in a way that fosters those positives behaviours.

With sleep training, the assumption is that the cessation of crying means emotion regulation. Yet emotion regulation doesn't happen because we are left in distress to cry alone. It just doesn't. It comes from co-regulation and support. Sadly this is why some studies that look at what we think are self-soothing behaviours mask intense emotional distress - the child having not been taught actual emotion regulation is simply trying to mask their pain (Wu et al., 2020).

01/20/2022

We receive some form of this question daily in our office after parents realize their child has a restricted tongue that is causing the family struggles. It hasn’t been identified previously, or they asked their trusted provider and received no information or even advice against having the tongue-...

01/20/2022

Research has also found high rates of unemployment and food insecurity among LGBTQ people.

10/10/2021

Did you know we do postpartum hospital visits at WNY Orofacial? With the current issues around COVID-19 and hospital labor and delivery options, many parents are finding that they arrive at the hospital and either do not have any individualized infant feeding support, or that the lactation staff at the hospital are simply too overwhelmed and overworked to be able to spend enough time with each family to get feeding off to a good start. This is where we can help! We regularly visit families in the hospital as soon as possible after the birth of their babies to offer the gentle, sensitive, and effective support we offer in the office- but we come to you!

**When we have advanced notice about estimated due dates and the start of labor, we waive our usual home visit fees in order to ensure there are as few barriers as possible for you to get your baby eating well as soon as possible after birth. Reach out to us through www.wnyorofacial.com to discuss your impending birth and nursing plans.

08/24/2021

Have you ever given these folks a listen? They're amazing!

Childbirth is such a routine part of life that in some ways it can become invisible, especially historically. History, people often assume, is made up of major events, political elections, wars, et…