Maternal Behavior

to explore women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding from formal support networks, specifically health professionals involved in postnatal support. a qualitative exploratory design was employed using the critical incident technique. Data were obtained from 62 Western Australian women who responded to an invitation to share incidents of receiving conflicting advice. Women who had breast fed a child within the past 12 months shared their experience through a telephone interview (n = 50) or completing a brief questionnaire (n = 12) addressing the following questions: Describe a situation in detail where you felt you received conflicting advice about breast feeding from a health professional. How did this situation affect you and/or your breast feeding? a modified constant comparison method was used to analyse the critical incidents revealing commonalities under who offered conflicting advice; what contributed to advice being perceived as conflicting; topic areas more inclined to being regarded as conflicting; what protected against advice being perceived as conflicting; the consequences of receiving conflicting advice; and strategies that women used to manage these incidents. advice that was viewed as conflicting extended beyond the provision of information that was inconsistent or directly contradictory, and included issues around information overload and disparities between the mother's and health professional's expectations. The manner of presenting information or advice, the skills of using effective communication, demonstration of a caring attitude with an empathic approach and focusing upon the woman as an individual were seen to be important to minimise these incidents. Attention to women's perceptions and the consequences of conflicting advice must be addressed, otherwise the credibility and confidence in health professionals' knowledge and ability to support breast feeding is questioned, resulting in a valuable support network being selectively ignored.

Abstract
Aim  To test whether alcohol is a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Design and setting  US epidemiological study using computerized death certificates, linked birth and infant death dataset, and Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
Participants  All SIDS cases (n = 129,090) and other infant deaths (n = 295,151) from 1973–2006; all persons involved in late‐night alcohol‐related crashes (n = 135,946) from 1994–2008.
Measurements  Three measures were used: the expected number of deaths on New Year versus the observed number (expected values were determined using a locally weighted scatterplot smoothing polynomial), the average number of weekend deaths versus the average number of weekday deaths, and the SIDS death rate for children of alcohol‐consuming versus non‐alcohol‐consuming mothers.
Findings  These measures indicate that the largest spikes in alcohol consumption and in SIDS (33%) occur on New Year, alcohol consumption and SIDS increase significantly on weekends, and children of alcohol‐consuming mothers are much more likely to die from SIDS than are children of non‐alcohol‐consuming mothers.
Conclusions  Alcohol consumption appears to be a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome, although it is unclear whether alcohol is an independent risk factor, a risk factor only in conjunction with other known risk factors (like co‐sleeping), or a proxy for other risk factors associated with occasions when alcohol consumption increases (like smoking). Our findings suggest that caretakers and authorities should be informed that alcohol impairs parental capacity and might be a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome; in addition, future research should further explore possible connections between sudden infant death syndrome and alcohol.

Objective: There has been little research on women who are parenting while they experience pain and none of this research has focused on mothers with young children. The purpose of this study was to consider relational coping strategies generated by mothers that they used when parenting young children and experiencing pain.Methods: Two-hundred sixty-two mothers participated in this survey research; 171

Objective  This randomized control trial examined the effects of a short-term, interaction-focused and attachment-based video-feedback intervention (VIPP: video-feedback intervention to promote positive parenting).Design  VIPP effect on mothers' sensitive responsiveness and infant–mother attachment security was evaluated in a sample (n = 54) of low sensitive, non-clinical, middle class Lithuanian mothers.Methods  Maternal sensitivity was assessed in a free play session with the Ainsworth's sensitivity scale, and attachment security was observed using the Attachment Q sort for home observations.Results  We found that the intervention mothers indeed significantly improved their sensitive responsiveness through participation in our VIPP. The effect size was large according to Cohen's criteria, d = 0.78. VIPP enhanced maternal sensitive responsiveness even when maternal age, educational level, depression, daily hassles, efficacy, infant gender, and infant negative and positive affect were controlled for. However, attachment security in the VIPP infants was not enhanced after the intervention, compared with the control infants, and the infants did not seem to be differentially susceptible to the increase in maternal sensitivity dependent on their temperamental reactivity.Conclusion  We suggest that a relatively brief and low-cost programme can provide effective support for mothers who lack sensitivity in the interactions with their infants.

We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding.