June 3, 2006 - 16th Annual Breastfeeding Conference - Toronto, Ontario

The partnership between Infact Canada, Toronto Public Health, Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre hosted the conference based on the theme ‘Good Health for the Family’

Each year I like to attend the Breastfeeding Conference to meet many of the speakers and participants to share in the promotion of breastfeeding and discuss the latest in breastfeeding research.  It’s like “old home week” to see everyone again.

The presentation by Dr. Nils Bergman on Kangaroo Mother Care was fascinating.  He was working at a hospital in Zimbabwe, and because of the lack of working incubators, started strapping premature babies to their mothers in an effort to keep them warm. Amazingly, these babies did better than babies in the incubators.  In fact, his research showed that KMC babies stabilized within 6 hours of birth, while the incubated babies remained unstable, and showed no trend towards stabilization.  He contends that skin to skin contact, and breastfeeding is the means whereby the premature infant continues its gestation.  He reiterated the primary violation to newborns is SEPARATION from their mother.