Her Story.

Her Background:

Lyndsey is an experienced Paediatric Nurse, Health Visitor, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Holistic Sleep Coach and Birth Trauma Recovery Practitioner, with almost 20 years experience working with infants, children and families in hospitals, clinics, and the community.

Lyndsey runs a busy practice offering one-to-one specialist breastfeeding, bottle feeding, sleep, eating, behavior and parenting support to families in the UK and Internationally, as well as an online training program for health and child care professionals. She is the author of Holistic Sleep Coaching and respected speaker, trainer and mentor. She is also hosting the Holistic Sleep Conference on March 9th and 10th. It is being held in London, but don’t worry if you cannot attend in person as you do have a chance to attend via Live Stream. Stay tuned and at the end of this show we will talk more about the conference as Lyndsey will tell us who is speaking and what they will be covering.

Her breastfeeding experience:

Lyndsey was determined to breastfeed. She states that she felt there was no other way to feed her baby. This was her feeding choice, which she says has no bearing on the decision that other parents might make about how they feed their baby.

She breastfed her first baby until she self weaned at the age of 3 years old – having her final breastfeed on her 3rd birthday, which makes it that much more special to Lyndsey.

She describes her first baby as being very alert, lots of fun and a great personality, however, she was a pretty difficult sleeper. Lyndsey describes fears associated with not having enough milk. This led her to make extreme breastfeeding/pumping decisions and now recognizes that this probably made breastfeeding much more difficult than it needed to be. Once she started training to become an IBCLC, she quickly realized that her breastfeeding and pumping behavior caused a major oversupply of milk, which tends to make breastfeeding more difficult. There is a silver lining to her overstuffed freezer – she donated her milk so other babies could benefit from human milk.

In hindsight, Lyndsey realizes that having had 4 miscarriages and then having pre-eclampsia with her oldest, this led to her not trusting her body. She now realized that she could have trusted her baby, but did not do that either. These are very normal and common responses.

Breastfeeding her second baby:

Her second baby was so mellow compared to her first baby. She would just be hanging out, very chill, eyes open, and okay to wait for be fed. Her name means blissfully happy, which describes her quite well. She was easy to feed, easy to read. Of course, Lyndsey recognizes that this was a second baby, she was more confident, and she was an IBCLC at this point.

She never pumped, never gave her a bottle. Her daughter was still plump, so was eating and gaining well, but she did not have a massive oversupply and therefore did not have all the reflux symptoms and none of the same problems with breastfeeding she experienced with her first.

When she was 3 1/2 years old, Lyndsey was feeling quite ready for her to be weaned. As life happens, she is grateful that she kept breastfeeding because she was diagnosed with leukemia. She became very sick, very quickly, but she kept breastfeeding throughout a majority of her chemotherapy treatment. Her daughter is almost d one with 26 months of therapy and Lyndsey is very grateful that her daughter continued to be interested in breastfeeding. She did not get the mouth ulcers they were pretty much promised to get. Even when she was not that hungry and lost some weight, she continued breastfeeding. Lyndsey feels this is directly responsible for her avoiding the need for an NG tube for nutrition.

Lyndsey feels that breastfeeding her baby through cancer treatment made her feel good about the fact that this was something special that she could do for her. In addition to provided additional opportunity for her to cuddle her and provide mother care, she liked to believe her breastmilk provided additional health protection for her daughter as she went through her cancer treatment.

Let’s talk about babies and sleep:

Her big spoiler – All children eventually wind up sleeping through the night.

Lyndsey is really passionate about sleep because it seems we either promote breastfeeding and attachment and responsiveness or we prioritize sleep,,,,, and there is nothing in the middle. That is fine if you have lots of support and the emotional internal resilience and people around you who can carry you along. If you can just relax and let your baby grow up however they are going to grow up

All children sleep eventually! Some take a bit longer, but they all eventually get there.

Her big spoiler – All children eventually wind up sleeping through the night.

If you have got tools to just get through it and maintain the responsive parenting behavior such as bed sharing, follow all the safe sleep guidelines, that is fine.

Lyndsey is fine with just letting babies be. She also believes: ” if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Some parents are just looking for reassurance that they are fine.

Some parents just need some validation for what they are doing. It is normal. It is working for you. It may not be okay for others, but if you are okay with it, perhaps there are some tips I can offer to help moms get some more rest.

Some additional topics we discuss during our interview are:
1. What advise does she tell parents who want to have their baby sleeping through the night?
2. what to look for in a sleep coach
3  what their training is? what courses they have taken?
4  Many still advise controlled crying – you need to ask them to be sure.
5. All the wonderful speakers who will be presenting at the conference

Her contact info:
Facebook: @LyndseyHookway @holisticsleepcoach
Twitter: @FeedSleepBond
Instagram: @holisticsleepcoachingprogram
Email: lyndseyhookway@gmail.com