Leonie and Rachael have attended the SRIP conference at Hinsley Hall, Leeds.
Day 1
The conference was opened by keynote speaker Olga can den Akker, Professor of Health Psychology, Middlesex University. The tone was set with hearing about new advances in third party assisted conception and importantly the impact/consequences for the parents, the third party who is assisting and crucially the child. The success rate of IVF has recently risen to 25% and so lots of families now have experienced this non-traditional and challenging way of bringing life into the world. Whilst highlighting the emotional effects of surrogacy for example, there were thoughts as to how the birth method may affect the parent-child relationship and the child’s feelings of identity as they learn of their heritage. Key research highlighted by Olga, was that when individuals are born through anonymous donor sperm/eggs, individuals have the right and often want to know whom their biological parents are. With countries having different legislation, attributing responsibility to either birth parents or genetic parents, it creates difficulty in monitoring how people are registered, there can be huge difficultly for people to find out their genetic heritability. Third party conception can introduce a new set of difference and equalities and so health planning for this way of reproducing should be a priority.
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The rest of the day was filled with themed presentations. In ‘Infants: Child development, interactions and feeding’ we heard research from Leonardo De Pascalis (University of Reading) who presented findings that infants born with a cleft lip/palate CLP developed typically compared to controls in self recognition tasks at 18 months old, but when looking in a mirror, infants with CLP stood further away from the mirror, displayed less positive emotion and showed less communicative cues to their parents. This coupled with previous research finding mothers of babies don’t look at their babies face as much as control mother-infant dyads posed an interesting discussion about maternal responsiveness and sensitivity to children with CLP
Janet McNally, University of Leeds presented her interesting qualitative PhD findings from mothers who either weaned their baby by the traditional method of spoon feeding in comparison to the newly popular baby led weaning. Her findings suggested it was a highly emotive subject with all mothers feeling the approach they selected was best for their baby, ease of approach but ultimately the approach needs to be matched with the babies characteristics of how they feed and the evidence base needs adding to.
The final presentation in this theme was by Dr Netalie Shloim (University of Leeds) sharing results that mothers of breast fed infants were more sensitive and responsive to their infants cues in compared to mothers who bottle fed their infants. Generally mothers who breast fed had more positive mealtime interactions with less distractions such as TV etc. strengthening the idea that it is not only important what infants are eating but also how mothers and infants communicate during a feed.
We attended some fascinating themed talks about ‘Development and validation of measures: birth satisfaction, birth trauma, postpartum specific anxiety'. One of the presenters included Professor Susan Ayers (City University London) who presented her work developing the Birth Trauma Scale, which is a measure of child birth related PTSD. Professor Ayers discussed that the Birth Trauma Scale was developed due to the lack of self-report measures of postpartum PTSD based on DSM-V criteria. Peers in perinatal research reviewed the questionnaire, in addition to postpartum women who had experienced birth-related PTSD. Overall, the research presented reminded us that the developing and using the valid and reliable scales measuring postpartum mental health is incredibly important for screening purposes and assessing the effects of treatment.
Leonie also did a flash presentation of the qualitative findings from the ACORN study. The aim the flash presentation was to present your research project in 3 minutes using one PowerPoint slide. Despite the tight time restrictions Leonie, alongside the other flash presenters, managed to state their research project within the time limit!
Janet McNally, University of Leeds presented her interesting qualitative PhD findings from mothers who either weaned their baby by the traditional method of spoon feeding in comparison to the newly popular baby led weaning. Her findings suggested it was a highly emotive subject with all mothers feeling the approach they selected was best for their baby, ease of approach but ultimately the approach needs to be matched with the babies characteristics of how they feed and the evidence base needs adding to.
The final presentation in this theme was by Dr Netalie Shloim (University of Leeds) sharing results that mothers of breast fed infants were more sensitive and responsive to their infants cues in compared to mothers who bottle fed their infants. Generally mothers who breast fed had more positive mealtime interactions with less distractions such as TV etc. strengthening the idea that it is not only important what infants are eating but also how mothers and infants communicate during a feed.
We attended some fascinating themed talks about ‘Development and validation of measures: birth satisfaction, birth trauma, postpartum specific anxiety'. One of the presenters included Professor Susan Ayers (City University London) who presented her work developing the Birth Trauma Scale, which is a measure of child birth related PTSD. Professor Ayers discussed that the Birth Trauma Scale was developed due to the lack of self-report measures of postpartum PTSD based on DSM-V criteria. Peers in perinatal research reviewed the questionnaire, in addition to postpartum women who had experienced birth-related PTSD. Overall, the research presented reminded us that the developing and using the valid and reliable scales measuring postpartum mental health is incredibly important for screening purposes and assessing the effects of treatment.
Leonie also did a flash presentation of the qualitative findings from the ACORN study. The aim the flash presentation was to present your research project in 3 minutes using one PowerPoint slide. Despite the tight time restrictions Leonie, alongside the other flash presenters, managed to state their research project within the time limit!
Rachael and Leonie also had the opportunity to present their posters in the poster viewing galleries, which facilitated an excellent opportunity to discuss the pPOD research which fellow peers.
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Rachael and Leonie attended the SRIP conference dinner last night, which was held at the Thackray Medical Museum. The Thackray Museum has a grand and impressive exterior that holds a number of different galleries presenting the world of medicine from the Victorian age to present day. Following the short ‘after hours’ tour of the museum, a three-course meal was served, and opened up a fantastic opportunity to socialize with others who are attending the SRIP conference.
The first day of the conference was an amazing experience and we are looking forward to seeing what the second day holds in store for us!
The first day of the conference was an amazing experience and we are looking forward to seeing what the second day holds in store for us!
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