Topics for Day 1: May 26th, 2025

Helen L Ball,  BSc (Hons), MA, PhD (England)

Helen is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Infancy & Sleep Centre (DISC) at Durham University. She founded Basis, the Baby Sleep Information Source in 2012 as an outreach project of DISC, for which she was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further & Higher Education in 2018. Her research examines the sleep ecology of infants and their parents including attitudes and practices regarding infant sleep and sleep safety, behavioural and physiological interactions of infants and their parents during sleep, infant sleep development, and the discordance between cultural and biological sleep needs. Much of her research has focussed on bed-sharing and breastfeeding. She has conducted research in hospitals, the community, and her lab, and she contributes to national and international policy and practice guidelines on infant care.

Helen served as a Board Member of ISPID (the International Society for the Study and Prevention of Infant Deaths) from 2018 to 2022, is Chair of the Grants/Research Committee, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group  for the Lullaby Trust, and serves on the Qualifications Board for Unicef UK Baby Friendly Initiative. She was also an Associate Editor for Sleep Health, journal of the US National Sleep Foundation 2020-2024 (all voluntary positions). In 2025 her popular science book How Babies Sleep will be published by Penguin Random House.

Topics

1- Normal Infant Sleep Development

2- Supporting parents with infant sleep disruption

Alyssa Schnell, MS, IBCLC (USA)

Alyssa has been helping parents and babies with breastfeeding since 2002, first as a La Leche League Leader and since 2009 as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.  Alyssa works in private practice serving clients worldwide, primarily through telehealth.  She is the author of Breastfeeding Without Birthing:  A Breastfeeding Guide for Mothers Through Adoption, Surrogacy, and Other Special Circumstances and a professional supplement to the book, The Breastfeeding Without Birthing Professional Pack online training.  She is also the creator of DomHub, an extensive online resource for domperidone. Alyssa has authored articles for The Journal of Human Lactation:  The Three Step Framework for Inducing Lactation and Successful Co-Lactation by a Queer Couple:  A Case Study.  She has also authored articles for La Leche League’s Leader Today and Breastfeeding Today magazines and Adoptive Families magazine. She is an international speaker on the topics of inducing lactation, relactation, co-lactation, and other related topics.  Alyssa is the proud mother of three breastfed children, two by birth and one by adoption.  She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

Topics

1- The Proficient Pomper

2-  Co-Lactation: How LGBTQIA+ Parents Share the Breastfeeding Relationship

Topics for Day 2: May 27th, 2025

Carmela Baeza, MD, IBCLC (Spain)

I am Carmela Kika Baeza, family physician and IBCLC from Madrid, Spain. I began my career as a primary healthcare physician but after personal difficulties with my eldest child (who had a severe heart condition) I realized I needed to know more about lactation... So in 2005 I became an IBCLC and have been working in the field of breastfeeding medicine ever since, clinically supporting dyads in a private practice (Centro Raices, Madrid). I was co-founder and first president of the Spanish IBCLC association, and am a very active speaker, both nationally and internationally. I have been part of the BFHI in Spain since 2008 and lactation training coordinator for the European Institute of Perinatal Mental Health since 2018. I feel very fortunate to be in this amazing field!!

Topics

1- Management of breast and nipple conditions during lactation

2- Management of the nursing infant with slow weight gain

Hope Lima, PhD, RDN, IBCLC (USA)

Dr. Hope Lima (she/her) is a nutrition and lactation educator and clinician who wants to help raise the bar for how we care for clients in the field of maternal and child health. She is trained as a nutrition researcher, an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), and a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN). Hope has advanced training in pediatric food allergies, metabolism, and utilizing an Internal Family Systems-informed counseling approach to support families.

Hope has experience in curriculum development, program planning and research methods as a professor in a university-level dietetics department. Hope also has experience in clinical counseling through her private practice, Hope Feeds Families, based in Rock Hill, SC. She uses these experiences to provide meaningful, engaging learning experiences for professionals in the fields of nutrition, dietetics, and lactation.

Hope founded Feeding Families Education and Consulting in 2023 with a vision of changing the way that we train clinicians and raising the bar for continuing education. When she is not working on her professional endeavors, Hope can be found playing with her 3 dogs, hiking in national parks with her husband, or riding roller coasters with her step-kids.

Topics

1- Elimination diets: When should a nursing mother try one?

2- Prevention of chronic disease: can breastfeeding change outcomes?