It’s been all go this semester for me! Here are the highlights so far!

Conferences

The year started off with the Healthy Children Project’s fantastic International Breastfeeding Conference in Deerfield Beach, FL and my presentation Breastfeeding Without Nursing: Information needs of exclusive pumpers. I will admit to being slightly disappointed at not being crowned the Milk Duck Queen, even though Georgie (my daughter) helped the ducks get to the other side!

I then recorded my presentation for iLactation’s Nutrition + Love conference. It’s still happening! So head over there to see my presentation, Breastfeeding without nursing: myth-busting exclusive milk expression to improve support given to exclusive pumpers, well as so many other brilliant speakers.

I had an amazing time at my first Breastfeeding and Feminism conference, where I presented Breastfeeding Without Nursing: What should we do about the prejudice against exclusive pumping? during a discussion workshop and a four-minute essay, Human milk has no gender: 21st century breastfeeding language.

Next week, I’m presenting online again at the GOLD Lactation conference, this time on Breastfeeding Without Nursing: Why do some breastfeeders exclusively pump and what can we do to support them? This conference is also still happening and also has some incredible speakers, so go register before you miss the opportunity.

On Campus

Last week was so busy for me. I got a Top 3 poster at Public Health Research @ Maryland Day, which was meaningful because it represented acceptance into the public health world, especially when there were so many other amazing posters.

I also competed in my campus Three-Minute Thesis (3MT to those in the know) finals. I was one of the three winners and also got the People’s Choice Award (thanks y’all!). My 3MT will be professionally recorded and one of the three winners will be put forward to represent UMD at the international competition – there’s a people choice award there too, so if I’m selected, I’m going to be spamming everyone to go vote!

I’m continuing to work on a project to improve lactation and feeding spaces on campus, which is both very rewarding (when we can really improve the facilities and therefore the experience of parents) and frustrating (when university bureaucracy makes everything more laborious and expensive).

Other Projects

Continuing with what I got started with the Universal Breastfeeding Symbol, I’ve been systematically redesigning baby feeding symbols. You can even buy stickers and merchandise!

My Research

My research – or rather, data analysis – keeps ticking along and will be turned into three-ish journal submissions in the coming year (the basis of my 3-paper dissertation…).

The bigger news is that I submitted a book proposal today. I’m super excited, but also realistic that this is the first ever book I’ve proposed and I’ve only sent it to one publisher, so success on the first try is super unlikely. It is the first step though!