What's new about Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation?

The Possums or NDC programs offer new ways of thinking about breastfeeding

Always, at the heart of what I’ve created with Neuroprotective Developmental Care or the Possums programs, lies a baby’s evolutionary expectation of breastfeeding, and the urgent need to help women with effective tools for resolving the breastfeeding problems which so often arise in our complex world.

Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation is unique because it is an approach to breastfeeding that goes hand-in-hand with the other Possums evidence-based programs about

• Baby's sleep

• Baby's sensory motor needs and development

• The baby who cries and fusses a lot in the first few months of life

• Bottle and supplemental feeding

• Taking care of parent mental health and emotional well-being.

The Possums programs start from the understanding that we can't offer the most effective, evidence-based breastfeeding and lactation help without also dealing with these other domains, because they interact together, and intimately affect each other.

The very first step in offering effective help to breastfeeding women and their babies is to work out what the real underlying problems are, rather than unnecessarily diagnosing medical or surgical conditions or unnecessarily pathologising normal anatomy and function.

Here are six ways in which Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation innovates

The following six innovations are the way of the future for breastfeeding families and their babies:

1. Mechanobiology is an understanding of how the mechanical forces which are fundamental to life on Earth affect living cells and tissues. The principles of mechanobiology are fundamental to this most physical, most embodied, act of love - the feeding of our babies from our bodies. This is why three key aspects of Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation derive from the science of mechanobiology:

   • The gestalt biomechanical model of infant suck

   • The gestalt method of fit and hold, and

   • The NDC mechanobiological model of breast inflammation (which includes nipple pain + damage).

2. The gestalt method of fit and hold, which uniquely draws on mechanobiology, is foundational to the help offered in Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation. I look forward to a future where every health professional who consults with families and babies is upskilled in effective clinical tools for fit and hold support during breastfeeding.

3. The Possums 5-domain approach to baby cry-fuss problems is fundamental to the Possums programs. I look forward to a future when everyone understands how breastfeeding problems are integral to the infant cry-fuss problems which cause so much exhaustion and psychological distress within families.

4. Avoidance of overdiagnosis and overtreatment is fundamental to the Possums programs. I look forward to a more frugal time when prevention is genuinely prioritised in the health system, when the environmental impact of infant formula use is factored into the cost of health system failures to effectively respond to breastfeeding problems, and when ineffective interventions are no longer funded by the health system, public or private.

5. Evolutionary bodywork is fundamental to Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation. I look forward to a future the principles of traditional bodywork therapies (osteopathy, chiropractic, craniosacral therapy, oral myofunctional therapy) evolve into what Possums calls evolutionary bodywork when treating breastfeeding infants.

6. Frequent and flexible breastfeeding as it's described in Possums is different to the popular meanings of 'breastfeeding on demand'. We look forward to a future when frequent and flexible breastfeeding again becomes the norm, as it has been for the whole of human evolutionary history until the time of the European Industrial Revolution.

In the meantime, I know how much you care about breastfeeding your baby. Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation is breastfeeding stripped bare of unnecessary medications, supplements, surgery, aids, exercises, bodywork therapy, and ideology! I hope to help you and your baby find joy together in breastfeeding - whether you are directly and exclusively breastfeeding, directly breastfeeding sometimes, or pumping.

We don’t have to wait for the health system to catch up. In Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation you'll find new heart-connected, science-based information to help you as you feed your precious little one from your own body.