This website has been developed as part of a research project at Coventry University. As part of the project we need to check that the website meets your needs. Please could you take a few minutes to complete a short questionnaire about the site? Clicking the button below will take you to our questionnaire. If you decline, you will still retain access to the ifeed website.
Research tells us that many pregnant women and parents are looking online for information about pregnancy, parenting and infant feeding. The resources they find vary widely in accuracy and many parents find it difficult to scan through the wealth of information and decide upon reliable sources, which can result in increased anxiety.
The majority of mothers stop breastfeeding earlier than they intended. Supporting breastfeeding requires skilled support but health professionals may not always have the time or specialised knowledge to offer this consistently.
The ifeed website was developed to provide tailored information and advice for mothers and their partners to help them make informed and confident decisions about infant feeding. Our aim was to promote breastfeeding without excluding those who do not breastfeed and to give factual information for helping parents make their own decisions about infant feeding. Because we know that the most important thing is for a baby to form a strong bond with its parents, whichever method of feeding chosen, there is a heavy emphasis on bonding and responsive feeding.
The website is the result of two years’ work from a team of psychologists, midwives, health visitors and GPs (mostly based in Coventry), and speaking to lots of parents, and was supported by a grant from the Medical Research Council. The content has also been reviewed by a lactation consultant. We have aimed to be consistent with the Baby Friendly and NICE guidelines.
This version of the website is currently being tested for user acceptance alongside existing services in Warwickshire, UK. We hope to seek further funding to test the effectiveness of the website for promoting breastfeeding and / or enabling safer bottle feeding. Ultimately we hope that health professionals will be able to direct parents to the site to supplement face to face contact and family-centered discussion around infant feeding.
Naomi Bartle is a psychologist with a particular interest in parents’ experiences of infant feeding. She has over 10 years experience of researching the topic and is now applying her knowledge to creating digital resources to support parents navigate the wealth of information available to them. Naomi has breastfed (and bottle fed) her daughter, but sometimes found it difficult to manage this alongside her friends’ expectations of what a baby ‘should’ do. Naomi is keen to help parents learn to trust their parenting instincts and and feel confident and empowered to breastfeed as long as they wish.
Katherine Brown is a Health Psychologist with expertise in the development and evaluation of public health interventions, particularly targeted at preventive health behaviours including sexual health behaviours, smoking cessation, weight management related behaviour and infant feeding. She has over 15 years’ experience in the field. Katherine breastfed her daughter for over two years, having initially struggled with pain and achieving a good latch. She is passionate about supporting parents to make really well informed decisions around infant feeding, and enabling them to get support to overcome challenges and achieve an approach to feeding their baby that is right for them.
Kajal Gokal is a psychologist with an interest in range of health related behaviours including infant feeding. She is keen to use her experience of research in health psychology and behaviour change interventions in the development and evaluation of the ifeed website. Kajal hopes that ifeed will support parents and provide them with the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about their infant feeding choices.
Louise Moody is a Psychologist working in the area of Art and Design. Blending psychology with design approaches, her research focuses on the development of new products, services and interventions that as well as being functional, are usable, acceptable and desirable to their users. Louise has 2 children (now 7 and 9), she found breastfeeding very difficult with her first and received excellent support locally. She feels strongly that all parents should have access to the reassurance, guidance and support they need to make their own informed feeding choices.
Jeremy Dale is a general practitioner and professor of primary care at Warwick Medical School. He has extensive experience of developing and researching interventions to improve wellbeing and patients’ experience of health care. As a GP he understands how challenging the early weeks and months of a new baby’s feeding can be, and how parents can benefit from access to excellent information and resources. First-hand experience with three children of his own underlined how important this is for Dads as well as Mums.
Susan Law is a Registered Midwife and Senior Lecturer in Midwifery with over 25 years’ experience in midwifery education. She is committed to student midwives providing support to mothers in feeding and building loving relationships with their babies, and is the project lead for the University’s application for UNICEF UK Baby Friendly accreditation. She has also been involved in a number of breastfeeding research projects at the University over the past 15 years.
Kayleigh Kwah is a researcher in Health Psychology with an interest in a range of health related behaviours, but more recently has discovered a passion for infant feeding sparked shortly after she became pregnant. Much of her work focuses on equipping people with the knowledge and skills to make informed choices that positively impact on their health. She hopes that ifeed can help mothers and fathers feel they have the knowledge and skills to make the right feeding choice for their family. Kayleigh is currently breastfeeding her daughter and has done so for the past 16 months.
