The Art of Birthing Celebrates Breastfeeding Awareness Month with Experiential Events Series
NEW ORLEANS, LA / AGILITYPR.NEWS / August 25, 2021 / International Holistic Conference celebrates Black women and motherhood using various forms of artistic expression to engage in a robust dialogue about improving healthy birth outcomes for Black families.
The Art of Birthing (TAOB) International Holistic Conference is pleased to again partner with New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) in celebration of the 9th year of national Black Breastfeeding Week, August 25-31, which aims to educate and end the systemic disparities the Black community faces in breastfeeding rates while also encouraging diversity in the lactation field.
Two remaining free sessions of TAOB’s Virtually Vibin’ Happy Hours will take place at 6pm on Thursday, August 26 and Monday, September 6. These free events include live giveaways and a sneak peek into all things The Art of Birthing. Interested individuals can register and learn more by visiting TheArtOfBirthing.info.
Session 1 entitled: “A Literary Review of Black Birth and Breastfeeding” will be in alignment with the 2021 Black Breastfeeding Week (#BBW21) theme #TheBigPause as TAOB and NOPL encourage all to kick back and relax with a good read from NOPL’s African American Resource Collection. Nekisha Killings, MPH, IBCLC will be a featured guest for this August 26 salute to Black Breastfeeding with the official launch of the Melanated Mammary Atlas, the first and only cache of images displaying mammary related conditions on Asian, Indigenous, Black and Brown folks; thereby improving care for the underserved by broadening the health professional knowledge base.
Monday, September 6th’s Special Labor Day Virtually Vibin’ Happy Hour session 2 will be hosted by Marcia Cole and Nana Eyeson-Akiwowo, creators of FourthPhaseBox.com, who curate after-care birth boxes and are part of a campaign to add “Fourth Trimester” to the dictionary.
A Brief History on Black Breastfeeding
Black women have unique cultural barriers and a complex history connected to breastfeeding.
As wet nurses, Black breasts fed and nurtured Caucasian children often to the detriment of their own Black children. In the late 20th century, St. Louis Pet Milk won a contract to exploit the birth of the world’s first recorded identical quadruplets, born to a Black Cherokee woman from Reidsville, North Carolina named Annie Mae Fultz and their father, Pete, a tenant farmer. Through Pet Milk’s bold marketing scheme, many Black women became convinced that formula was just as healthy as, or even healthier than, breast milk.
The federal government, through the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), is the single largest purchaser of formula in the United States, receiving generous rebates on these purchases which go directly into the budget of the federal nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). WIC, in turn, distributes formula free to women in its program, significantly increasing the likelihood that these women will choose not to breastfeed their children. Additionally, women and children in need of government assistance cannot afford to refuse free food, so when high-sugar processed formula is an infant’s first food, they are likely to crave this type of food into adulthood. This diet creates a high risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other preventable conditions.
Over the following decades, as images marketing formula to Black women increased, positive images of Black women breastfeeding remained virtually nonexistent, while magazines such as National Geographic portrayed breastfeeding Black women as exotic and savage. Nowadays, rural, lower-income and communities of color face a lack of mainstream role models and multi-generational support for the stigma propagated against breastfeeding.
Black Breastfeeding Stats according to the CDC
- 75% of white women have ever breastfed versus 58.9% of black women.
- Among all infants born in 2015, black infants had a significantly lower rate of any breastfeeding at age 3 months (58%) than did white infants (72.7%). At age 6 months, the rates were 44.7% among black infants and 62.0% among white infants.
- Increased breastfeeding among black women could decrease infant mortality rates by as much as 50%.
It is widely recommended by physicians and health care authorities that mothers exclusively breastfeed their infants for the first six months of life and continue to breastfeed while introducing solids during the second half of the first year. Positive effects of breastfeeding include:
- Improved Economics and Reduced Inequalities. Breastfeeding can help break the cycle of poverty for families, which impacts hunger and malnutrition by imposing no additional household food costs. Economically, breastfeeding can potentially decrease costs of hospitalizations, medications, and reduced absenteeism
- Lower Infant Mortality Rates, Malnutrition Prevention and Long Term Dietary Habits: Overall nationally, Black infants are dying at over twice the rate as white infants. Breastfeeding has lower incidence of respiratory infections and ear infections for infants and children and reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer for mothers. It also reduces the risk of childhood obesity and other preventable conditions compared to formula feeding.
- Family Bonding: Not only does breastfeeding provide food security to infants from the very beginning of life, the skin-to-skin contact strengthens the bond between parent and child and can help mothers physically recover from childbirth, as well as reduce the chances and impact of postpartum depression on new mothers.
The Art of Birthing International Conference
The Art of Birthing creates an intentional vibration toward healing, love, elevation, and empowerment through provocative workshops, a birth justice film festival and a multitude of visual, written, creative, spoken word and performing arts productions. This year’s Art of Birthing national conference will run September 20 - 26, 2021 and it will include: award winning documentaries and engaging panel discussions, a virtual paint and sip experience, a series of workshops and more!
Register or engage with The Art of Birthing national conference at www.TheArtofBirthing.info
About Us
Sista Midwife Productions is a birth advocacy organization based in New Orleans, Louisiana that provides education, training, and consultations for communities, birth workers, and organizations that work with childbearing families. Its mission is to improve pregnancy and birth experiences and to eliminate perinatal disparities by increasing the number of black birth workers, teaching families about their rights and options; and creating transparency and accountability within childbirth education and the medical obstetrical system.
Laissez Faire Productions: In 2020, SMP engaged Laissez Faire Productions to elevate and expand the event from a local experience to a national holistic conference. Rebranded and dubbed "A Virtually Vibin’ Experience,” The Art of Birthing celebrates Black mothers and birth professionals and covers a myriad of topics surrounding birth. Founded by CEO Heather Ferdinand Gonzales, Laissez Faire Production Group specializes in large-scale corporate event production, brand elevation, experiential marketing, and luxury layout and design.
Nicole Deggins, CEO Sista Midwife Productions: As a highly sought-after trainer, public speaker, and community educator working to eliminate perinatal disparities and bring transparency to prenatal education and the medical obstetrical system, Nicole Deggins is a dedicated leader, mentor, and consultant with over two decades of experience actively advocating to increase the numbers of African American midwives, doulas, and birth advocates. Deggins is the creator of the Sista Midwife Birth Sister/Doula training and the largest online Black Midwives and Doula Directory. In addition to her training and community work, Deggins sits on the Louisiana Pregnancy Associated Mortality Review Committee, the Louisiana Healthy Moms Healthy Babies Council, and is a former faculty member for the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative. Deggins has provided guest lectures to public health students at Tulane and Xavier Universities. She is an active consultant for the Global Infant Safe Sleep Center (GISS) and has provided training and consultation to many local and national birth agencies including the New Orleans Maternal Child Health Coalition, Birthing Project USA, Birth Mark Doula Collective, The International Center for Traditional Childbearing, Healthy Start New Orleans, The Intune Mothering Project, Birth Rite New Orleans, and WIC. Prior to starting her work with Sista Midwife Productions, Deggins received her BS in Nursing from Georgetown University, and completed a dual degree program at Emory University where she fulfilled the requirements for the MS in Nursing with a concentration in midwifery, and an MPH with a concentration in Health Policy and Management. During her clinical career, Deggins has practiced as a midwife in Washington, D.C., Mississippi, and Louisiana, and has worked as a labor and delivery, postpartum, and well-baby/newborn nurse in numerous public and private settings throughout the country.
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