With Guest Speaker Midwife: Sylvia Baddeley
Staffordshire University observed its first (ever) Student Baby Conference on Friday February 8th, 2019. This event had been organised to co-inside with the delivery (pardon the pun) of the Working with Babies Module (0-3 years) and to cover specific topics related to the module. The whole day event was an opportunity for students to engage and experience a conference style presentation, something new for many students.
Our Guest Speaker, Sylvia Baddeley is a Bonding and Attachment Specialist Midwife whose career spans nearly over 39 years; she is a Freelance Lecturer, an eminent speaker and researcher; has (also) worked with Stoke Speaks Out; pioneered Aqua Natal Classes and on top of all that, she still finds time for personal hobbies such as painting; art and local history. And so, it was our privilege to have some an experienced and knowledgeable professional delivering our first ever conference.
The focus of the day was to increase knowledge and understanding about pregnancy, complications of pregnancy; foetal development (pre and post-natal); the importance of attachment & bonding with baby (during and after pregnancy; Touch to Touch how and this impacts on the attachment process. The conference finished with an afternoon session examining Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, the cause and effect and most importantly, how to recognise this when working in an early years setting.
Students participated with a warm up session (exercises to Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars) to begin with.
Later, the group participated in discussions and the sharing of knowledge about known complications during pregnancy and how might these impact on both mother & baby. In addition to this, we had a ‘Ask the Midwife’ session and believe me, there were plenty of questions raising sound awareness about a range of issues affecting both mother, baby, father/partner and family.
All in all, this was a very interesting and informative day which students thoroughly appreciated as can be seen by Student Feedback.
Further feedback included:
“Thank you for hosting the conference today Heather, I found it so interesting and learnt a lot. It’s also helped me a lot for my assignment, Sylvia was fantastic and so knowledgeable!”
To conclude, this was a fabulous day as the conference enhanced the module content and provided students with a different experience #ProudtobeStaffs