Cynthia Good, MS Clinical Psychology, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Psychotherapist, author, consultant, and internationally recognized speaker. She is the Director of Perinatal Mental Health and Parent Support at Sandbox Therapy Group in Washington, USA and serves as Program Chair for GOLD Lactation. She is also Certified in Acute Traumatic Stress Management, and formerly served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University where she taught counseling skills. Cynthia has a strong interest in the emerging field of lactational psychology. She brings the evidence and insights of psychology and lactation consulting to her presentations, providing information and teaching skills that are essential to understanding and effectively responding to the complex psychosocial realities of families living in diverse contexts. The focus of her presentations includes equity, diversity, and inclusion; perinatal mental health; adoptive lactation; perinatal loss, grief, and trauma; counseling techniques; ethics; serving as an expert witness; cultural competence and humility; vitamin D; and more.
Cynthia Good, MS Clinical Psychology, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Psychotherapist, author, consultant, and internationally recognized speaker. She is also Certified in Acute Traumatic Stress Management, and formerly served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University in Washington, USA where she taught counseling skills. She has a strong interest in the emerging field of lactational psychology. She is the Director of Perinatal Mental Health and Parent Support at Sandbox Therapy Group in Washington, USA and serves as Program Chair for GOLD Lactation. She formerly served as Research Associate in the Publications Department of La Leche League International, faculty of Parkland College in Illinois, USA, and Education Manager at the International Lactation Consultant Association. She has authored, contributed to, and provided editorial review of numerous publications related to lactation, culture, psychology, and social justice.
Cynthia Good, MS Clinical Psychology, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Psychotherapist, author, consultant, and internationally recognized speaker. She is also Certified in Acute Traumatic Stress Management, and formerly served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University where she taught counseling skills. She focuses on issues related to birth, lactation, culture, psychology, ethics, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Cynthia has a strong interest in the field of lactational psychology, the name of which she coined in the Journal of Human Lactation in 2006. She is the Director of Perinatal Mental Health and Parent Support at Sandbox Therapy Group in Washington, USA and serves as Program Chair for GOLD Lactation. She brings the evidence, insights, and tools of psychology and lactation consulting to her unique presentations, many of which present information and teach skills that are essential to understanding and effectively responding to the complex psychosocial realities of families living in diverse contexts. She is a member of the National Center for Crisis Management and the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. She formerly served as Research Associate in the Publications Department of La Leche League International, a member of Mothering Magazine’s Expert Panel, faculty of Parkland College in Illinois, USA where she taught both statistics and abnormal psychology, and Education Manager at the International Lactation Consultant Association. She has authored, contributed to, and provided editorial review of numerous publications. Her work has been translated from English into Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Croatian, Hungarian, and Chinese. She has experience working with the full spectrum of lactation—from healthy, well-supported parents nurturing healthy, full-term newborns to dyads coping with perinatal mental health issues to adoptive parents inducing lactation for nurslings with special needs.
This presentation provides an overview of domestic violence (also called interpersonal violence), including its different forms (e.g., physical, verbal, emotional, financial, narcissistic), high prevalence, and deleterious impact on parents, children, and lactation. Research on the protective effects of lactation is also reviewed. Also described are skills such as counseling strategies, screening, and referral that are part of providing sensitive care to expectant and new parents who are or could be experiencing domestic violence. Scenarios help illustrate the varied ways that lactation can be experienced in a context of domestic violence. This presentation can be focused on the educational needs of lactation specialists or, more broadly, on the needs of perinatal care providers.
In many countries, expert witnesses serve the role of educating triers of fact on issues that are typically outside the experience and knowledge of lay people or professionals who do not have the needed expertise. IBCLCs can serve as expert witnesses in legal proceedings related to situations that involve lactation (e.g., divorce, custody, and visitation; protecting lactation in the work place). Serving well in this role requires a clear understanding of the strengths and constraints inherent in the IBCLC’s scope of practice, using strategies that can make an expert witness more effective, and knowing how to find relevant resources. This session provides IBCLCs with introductory information that will 1) help them make a more informed decision about becoming an expert witness and 2) allow them to perform more effectively and confidently in that role.
Providing unbiased services is explicitly or implicitly mandated or recommended in codes of ethics and position statements in many fields, including those that involve the provision of lactation support. For example, IBCLCs are ethically required to “present information without personal bias” and to “treat all clients equitably without regard to age, ethnicity, national origin, marital status, religion, or sexual orientation.” Avoiding bias is not an act of will power or the natural result of “good character.” It requires ongoing development and application of specialized knowledge and skill. The field of cognitive psychology offers a wealth of research regarding bias. This session provides an overview of 1) the ethical call for the avoidance of bias by lactation specialists, 2) the nature of cognitive bias, 3) three bias-related cognitive processes that can unconsciously influence the thinking and behavior of lactation specialists, 4) risk factors for acting on bias, and 5) five strategies that can help lessen bias in lactation support services.
The limited time in which many lactation specialists work with families means that only a portion of the support and information that is needed can be provided. Therefore, a critical goal of brief lactation encounters must be the initiation and nurturing of a process of learning and change that the family can sustain on their own after the encounter is over. This goal is also central to solution-focused brief therapy. This presentation offers an introduction to key concepts and techniques from solution-focused brief therapy and describes how they can be applied—in a non-psychotherapeutic manner—to the provision of lactation support and consulting. It includes practical tools that any lactation specialist can routinely use to work more effectively with families when time is limited, such as helping clients set goals that can be measured, looking for exceptions to the problem, and keeping track of progress through the use of scaling.
This presentation helps attendees better understand issues related to inequities in access to the lactation consultant profession, what institutional oppression is and how it occurs, the ethical rationale for dismantling institutional oppression, and the change process that individuals and institutions experience when engaging in this work.
A variety of losses and types of grief are common in the perinatal time period. Some of these losses are specifically related to the reproductive and perinatal experience and some just happen to occur during pregnancy or after birth. Perinatal care providers who understand the diverse experience of loss and grief are better able to provide compassionate and effective care for the families they seek to serve. This presentation provides an overview of loss and grief, including the difference between bereavement, grief, and mourning; ambiguous loss; disenfranchised grief; prolonged grief; chronic sorrow; and depression. It also describes skills—such as companioning, screening, and referral—that are part of providing grief-sensitive care to expectant and new parents who are coping with loss and grief.
This presentation provides an overview of loss and grief, including the difference between bereavement, grief, and mourning; ambiguous loss; disenfranchised grief; prolonged grief; chronic sorrow; and depression. Explored issues include the implications of research on stress and lactation, lactation loss and grief, and lactation after pregnancy loss and infant death. This presentation also describes skills—such as companioning, screening, and referral—that are part of providing grief-sensitive care to expectant and new parents who are coping with loss and grief. This presentation can be focused on the educational needs of lactation specialists or, more broadly, on the needs of perinatal care providers.
This session reviews the ethical call for the development of cultural competence. Five areas of cultural competence—including cultural awareness, knowledge, skill, encounters, and desire—are presented and contrasted with cultural humility. This session also offers 10 “guideposts” for lactation specialists to explore on the non-linear, lifelong, transformative journey of cultural humility.
A participatory session exploring invisible systems of privilege that contribute to racial inequity in access to skilled lactation support and how seeing what is meant to remain unseen can help lactation specialists more effectively serve communities of color.
An overview of the complex research base of information essential for facilitating informed decision making on vitamin D supplementation during lactation. Addresses risk factors for vitamin D deficiency and options for preventing vitamin D deficiency in infants under 1 year of age.
An introduction to concepts and tools that are useful when working with members of any culture. Includes a discussion of cultural dimensions, how culture impacts lactation, how lactation consultants and others can work with parents from many cultures to promote positive lactation experiences, and how to work toward the development of cultural competence.
An introduction to ethical and cultural concepts and principles that are essential for ethical decision making in cross-cultural lactation counseling and consulting settings. It includes a review of cultural dimensions which impact lactation and lactation counseling and consulting, principles within the Code of Professional Conduct that mandate cultural competence, how ethical issues interact with non-universal, culturally-based values and beliefs in lactation counseling and consulting, and fundamental principles that lactation specialists must apply when working to resolve ethical dilemmas in cross-cultural settings.
A review of several models of context and their application to infant feeding issues and decisions. Provides lactation consultants and other perinatal health care providers with understanding and tools to work more compassionately and effectively with mothers from diverse backgrounds.
An overview of perinatal depression, including risk factors, symptoms, how lactation and postpartum depression interact, lactation compatible approaches to treating postpartum depression, and why and how perinatal specialists should screen and refer at-risk clients for evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of perinatal depression.
An introduction to the physical and psychological risks for parents and their children of mental health care that undermines lactation during postpartum depression and to a variety of lactation compatible treatment options for postpartum depression during lactation.
