To raise our children to be happy and successful is every parent’s goal and dream.  Deb Arthurs is an ex-teacher and educational board advisor and she is passionate about children’s learning. On this podcast you will love to learn her ideas about creating thriving families. Her website ‘Best Parenting Advice’ is also a goldmine of free tips and tools to help you stay focused on what is important.

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Susan Walton, a Newcastle behavioural optometrist, talks us through the importance of our eyes working as a team. We are all aware that 20/20 vision is essential for health and learning.  However, having the eyes work together as they alternate between focusing close, looking into the distance and moving here and there is equally important.  Susan enlightens us about how the function of our eyes reveal how our  brain functions.  She also shares what we can do to improve function of them both.

Breast feeding is recommended by WHO for the first 12 months of a baby’s life, but it can be heart-breakingly hard work for some mum’s and babies.  Tethering of the tissues in the mouth may affect baby’s ability to create a good seal and an effective suck when feeding, potentially causing tummy pain and reflux. Tongue, lip and buccal ties may also lead to trouble with chewing, swallowing and speech. Kristie-Lee Anning is a local dentist with a masters degree in oral tissue revision. She shares with us the in’s and out’s of what this is all about and what can be done about it.   Dorte Bladt: I’ve got Kristie-Lee Anning with me today from Honeysuckle Dental and she’s going to talk to us about tongue-ties, and lip-ties and things like that. I’m so pleased you could be here. Thank you for joining us. Kristie-Lee Anning: Thank you for having me. Dorte Bladt: I’ve given people your name. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Kristie-Lee Anning: I’m a general dentist and I’ve done some additional training in laser dentistry, so I did a Master’s of Laser Dentistry over in Slovenia. That’s given me the opportunity to have a bit of better understanding about tongue-ties and things like that, and the release and benefit of the release. But I’ve also got a nursing background before I did dentistry. That’s also piqued my interest in that area. Dorte Bladt: We just spoke before about you potentially being a little bit hyperactive. You have definitely been. You have confirmed my suspicions. You’re crazy. So why taking a course in Slovenia? Kristie-Lee Anning: Yeah. The academy over in Slovenia, the Laser & Health Academy, they produce the lasers that I use in my clinic and they’re one of the best lasers in the world. So the training academy that they have there is really comprehensive so that’s why I’ve done the travel over to Slovenia to do the training on site. Dorte Bladt: Okay. Excellent. So tell us a little bit about… I think for many parents, there’s a lot of confusion about what the tongue-tie or lip stuff, what is it that you actually look for and work with? Kristie-Lee Anning: Often, I get a lot of mums coming in with babies that are having challenged with their feeding patterns, sleeping patterns. Babies have not been able to breastfeed effectively and have had to go onto bottle feeding. And parents that are wanting to improve the feeding experience often reporting that their children or their babies have got reflux or colic, very unsettled sleeping. So when they come in to see me, we’re doing an evaluation to see if those feeding patterns, if there’s a contributing factor from tongue-tie release or tongue-tie that might require some release or some intervention. But also checking the other tissues within the mouth, checking lip ties as well and buccal ties and just seeing what the movement or range of movement is of all of those oral tissues. Dorte Bladt: So what I hear you say is that you’re doing quite a comprehensive assessment both of the symptom, if you wish, but also what may be the cause. Kristie-Lee Anning: Yes. Dorte Bladt: It’s not enough just to come in and say, okay, I lift my child’s or my baby’s tongue up and I can see that it’s tied and I want it done. Kristie-Lee Anning: Yes. There are quite a number of factors that we’re evaluating. Everyone has a freedom attachment or that piece of tissue that’s under the tongue or under the lip that tethers the tongue in some way. It’s whether or not that tissue is restrictive and functionally limiting in feeding, food consumption for older toddlers as well, not just babies, speech development and other factors. So there has to be some limiting factors there that contribute to it in order for us to want to treat that.

Carrying your baby in a carrier or a sling on your body has many benefits to both of you.  For the carrier it allows you to have both hands free to do other things especially important with siblings.  Having baby’s weight, light as she is, close to your body decreases the  stress and strain on your muscles and joints minimising fatigue.  Having her close also increases your opportunity to be tune with baby’s needs and moods.  For your baby, when she is in a supportive and well designed carrier, she is protected, safe and warm.  She is snuggled close enough to hear your heart, your breath and your voice as she could in the womb. She follows your daily rhythm and routine and gets gentle sensory stimulation through your movement and experiences. Peta Wilson, a Newcastle physiotherapist, designs, consults and sells wraps, slings and carriers.  She talks us through the benefits of the different options and what to look for to get the perfect fit for you and your baby.   Dorte Bladt: I’d like to welcome to Peta Wilson today. She’s from Moondani. Hello, Peta. Peta Wilson: Hello Dorte Bladt: Thanks for coming along. Peta Wilson: Thanks for having me. Dorte Bladt: So tell us a little bit about the exciting things you do. Peta Wilson: Well, I’m a physiotherapist locally and I’m also a mom of three beautiful babies. From there, I started to wear my babies in various types of carriers and decided to start a business called Moondani. I design fabrics and I make them into ergonomic, physio, myself-approved carriers so that they’re comfortable and they’re fitting well and also look very attractive. Dorte Bladt: Very good. So you obviously have a bit of a creative side. Peta Wilson: I do. I enjoy that side of it a lot. Dorte Bladt: There seems to be a lot about baby carriers and lots of different options on the market. Can you explain to us why would you wear a carrier and what should you look for? Peta Wilson: It’s very confusing especially for a new parent. They often want to get a carrier before their baby is even born so it can be a really tricky concept to get your head around. But the reasons you might want to wear a carrier is, one, to be hands-free so that you can do other things. Babies like to sleep a lot. They like to cuddle a lot. They like to feed a lot. And it really helps if you can have a comfortable way to keep them close while you’re still interacting with the world. So that’s good for both mom and bub and dad and whoever is caring for the child. There’s a thing at the moment. It’s called the fourth trimester, so it’s obviously something that’s been around since the beginning of babies and parents. But they’ve coined the phrase, the fourth trimester. That’s basically giving your baby a womb-like experience. They’re very used to being warm and cuddled in close and hearing the lulled sounds of their mother. Wearing your baby in a well-fitting carrier can give them that easier, gentler transition into the world after birth, which is really beneficial for all sorts of things. So their hormonal regulation, their temperature regulation, not to get into too much science about it but it just gives them that gentle transition into the world. Dorte Bladt: I think the science bit is very interesting, though. There are so many physiological benefits from continuing being close to mum but we sometimes, in our little busy industrial world, we sort of forget… just stick them in the capsule in the car and stick them in the pram that looks like it’s a tank but it’s quite removed from the experience that they had before. Peta Wilson: Yeah. I find from my own personal experience that having the baby close most of the time, it just puts them in sync with your own rhythms of your day.

Dean O’Rourke lets us in on the secret of breathing properly to promote health and well-being for the whole family.   Dorte Bladt: I’m so excited to have this next speaker with us today. I saw a young person come into my practice the other day and they had just found this guy in… well, actually, they’d been recommended to see this guy and I was like, whoa, I found someone in Newcastle. So I’m so pleased. Thank you for joining us this morning. This is Dean O’Rourke. I’m really pleased to have you here. Dean O’Rourke: Thank you. Dorte Bladt: Tell us a little bit about yourself? Dean O’Rourke: Well, my health journey has been an interesting one. I started out as a Health Phys Ed teacher many years ago after doing it at Newcastle Uni. I found I was getting more and more interested in the health side of things and less and less interested in the sports side of things. But what happened to me is I developed a very severe and chronic case of hay fever. I was suffering it all year round, not just in spring but all year round, taking all of the drugs that the doctor was giving me and getting sicker and sicker and it just seemed like there was no end to it. So in utter desperation, I went looking for answers. When I started doing that, it changed the course of my life, essentially cured myself of the condition. I’ve been medication-free and symptom-free for many years now. And it changed my career, what I do. Dorte Bladt: Excellent. So what do you actually do? Dean O’Rourke: I specialize in breathing and orofacial function. So I help people with any breathing-related problem, any chronic respiratory problem, or any problem that they might have related to that. It’s a very specialized area. There’s not many people that do what I do. Dorte Bladt: No. It’s so exciting you’re here. Dean O’Rourke: So I’ve been doing it for over a decade now in Newcastle and on the Central Coast. Dorte Bladt: When you say that you’re specializing in breathing, it’s one of those things we do many times a day and we could sort of lift our eyebrows and say, “You know what? I’ve done it for many years now.” So tell us a bit about what you’re looking for. Dean O’Rourke: That’s often the way people think about breathing and the reality is there’s a lot of misconception about breathing and a lot of misinformation as well. A lot of people do think it’s just something you do and you just stop doing it one day. Dorte Bladt: Hopefully not too soon. Dean O’Rourke: That’s right. But the reality is there is a right and wrong way to breathe and, when I discovered that, a whole new world opened to me. The reality is that dysfunction can range from mild through severe. It can happen at any age. And if you are on the dysfunction spectrum, it can lead to a whole heap of health problems, well, problems people suffer. Genetics plays a role in that, or maybe the severity of it, but, very often, the trigger or the path they go down is because of their breathing function. The reality is you’re breathing 24/7. So if it’s not right, it’s affecting you 24/7. It’s the foundation of your health. Most people you ask them what the two most important things to their health are, they would say diet and exercise. As important as those two things are, I’m not in any way saying they’re not important, but the reality is breathing is well in front than those two things. The only thing that comes close to breathing in terms of critical function, in terms of what you need to do to promote it would be hydration. And hydration is a distant second to breathing, still. But most of us just take breathing for granted and we’re unaware of how much it may be affecting our health.

Meg Linton from MegHQ talks about how to meet life’s challenges with a present and balanced mind and body. Typically, in our feverish goal to get fit and healthy, we rush around madly working hard to tick off exercise on our ‘to do list’.  However, in our rush, we often forget the importance of connecting to what we holistically need in this moment.  Being mindful of what our bodies need, and slowing our movements down so we can control  them and create balance will greatly enhance the results our efforts. Meg mixes primal movements with yoga and breathing practice, and shares with us some pearls we can bring to our own efforts of creating better health.   Dorte Bladt: So Welcome to Meg Linton. I’m really excited to be with Meg today. She’s from Redhead Wellness Sanctuary and she’s come here to share some amazing information about the body. Welcome. Thank you. Meg Linton: Amazing. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really pumped to be here. I’m super excited. When you mentioned it, I just had this like little buzzy feeling, so I’m super, super grateful. Dorte Bladt: Excellent. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Meg Linton: Goodness. I teach yoga. I teach mindfulness. And I teach kids and adults how to speak differently and speak better to themselves. Dorte Bladt: That sounds interesting. Meg Linton: Yeah. It’s just something I’m so passionate about. When we change the way we speak to ourselves, when we become aware of that, we can then change the direction and therefore we can actually be in a happier state. We can have more energy and vitality. So I’m so passionate about that. Dorte Bladt: Sounds really, really interesting. So you say you’re doing yoga, you teach yoga? Meg Linton: I do. I teach yoga at Redhead Wellness and a few other places around Newcastle. I speak in schools on body language and bullying and self-sabotage. I am writing a book at the moment as well. Dorte Bladt: You are busy. Meg Linton: Yeah. It’s good. It’s my passion and I love it. Dorte Bladt: So I want to just hit you on the yoga for a little while because yoga seems to be, that’s what we have to do in 2019. Meg Linton: Yeah. It’s become like a bit of a trend, isn’t it? Dorte Bladt: Totally. You have your yoga mat wherever you go. What type of yoga, if I say, do you do but also do you find is useful for families? Meg Linton: Beautiful. Great question. I do many types of yoga, I suppose. I think it all comes in handy. I think it’s a mixture of balance, kind of getting that equilibrium between that yin and yang. For families, I think just getting on the mat, having a play and not being so serious. It’s about just moving the body and breathing. It’s not yoga without the breath and the breath is what brings us back into that beautiful parasympathetic state. It’s a way to find this delicious kind of flow within the body. I know that every time I get to my mat I feel so much calmer after that. I feel really relaxed and I can actually function a lot more. I’m a lot more kind when I get to my mat. I try to get to my mat every day. For kids, even if it’s just finding 20 minutes, some animal movements, even some animal sounds, we do that at Redhead, that’s super cute, it’s having fun and allowing ourselves to get lost in our practice and be mindful and be present because, in the present, we have peace. If we are stuck in our past or if we are looking too far ahead in our future, we are going to be in states that are going to alter us. We’re not going to feel calm. We’re not going to feel that beautiful, nice state that we should be operating in. Dorte Bladt: Or are definitely better when we are. Meg Linton: Totally. Dorte Bladt: You mentioned, and I just grabbed on that,

Children’s chiropractor, Dr. Dorte Bladt, discusses the practice of mindfulness with Charlotte Thaarup of The Mindfulness Clinic. Intro: Flourishing Families with Dorte Bladt, the (opens in a new tab)">Switched-On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive. Dorte Bladt: I’ve got Charlotte Thaarup here today. I’m very excited. She’s from (opens in a new tab)">The Mindfulness Clinic. Charlotte, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Charlotte Thaarup: Well, I’m in a very privileged position because I work with what I’m most passionate about and I know it works. I see it on a daily basis. So, I work with mindfulness, and I have for the last 10 to 15 years. Of course, it’s extremely researched. They have 150,000 research documents and articles on it. Many of them are nonsense ones but nonetheless, it points to their effectiveness. Of course, what it does is that it mirrors and matches the ancient practice of mindfulness which sits within Buddhism and it matches that beautifully, so that’s exciting.   Dorte Bladt: Just to make sure that we know that we’re all on the same page – what is mindfulness? Charlotte Thaarup: That’s a good question because I think there’s so many different definitions. Some define the practice, some the outcome – that’s confusing in itself. So, if you are doing mindfulness, it’s a “doing” thing. It’s not something you can read in a book. Reading about mindfulness is not going to make you mindful because it requires awareness, so it is a practice where we start to get to know our minds. Of course, our mind is a result of our past, so we start to observe how the mind works so that we can direct it more in wholesome ways and away from unwholesome. That’s really what we’re doing. Dorte Bladt: Can you give me an example because that sounds very beautiful, but I’m not quite sure if I can see it in my head. Charlotte Thaarup: So you’ll notice thoughts – thoughts pop up all the time. You’ll also notice sensations – feelings in your body arise all the time, so when you observe something that comes up that’s not very pleasant, let’s say you observe jealousy, and you’ll notice that as a sensation that sort of sits in the chest and in the gut. You can go, “whoa, I better just breathe a little bit now so that doesn’t become a really big cloud.” That’s one example when you catch it in the body and you just sit with it and you know it is a visitor. It’s not a truth. You can just be with it. You might notice a thought that goes, “oh, I don’t know why he’s saying that. What a stupid thing to say,” and you go, “whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me not continue further on that one.” Just take a few breaths and calm down and then see other options of thinking, because every time you think of a thought that’s kind of charged in that way, you’re strengthening what we call the angry, greedy, arrogant, reactive wolf within,

Dorte Bladt discusses movement and disabilities with exercise physiologist, Anna Campbell. Intro: Flourishing Families with Dorte Bladt, the Switched-On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive. Dorte Bladt: I’d like to welcome Anna Campbell from HealtheCo to our podcast this morning. Anna, tell us a little bit about yourself. Anna Campbell: Hi Dorte and thank you for having me and thank you, everyone, for listening. I’m an exercise physiologist (EP) and I run a business called HealtheCo who specialises in pediatric disability. Also, we do see clients who have musculoskeletal conditions and other chronic conditions but 99.8% of our portfolio are kids with disabilities. Dorte Bladt: Excellent. So tell me about – what is an exercise physiologist compared to a personal trainer? Anna Campbell: We get asked that a lot, actually. Often the question is “what’s the difference between an exercise physiologist as compared to a physio or a personal trainer?” So, there are some similarities but there’s also a vast difference in what we do. Exercise physiologists prescribe specific movements for medicine. So we don’t generally diagnose injuries. We leave that usually up to the physiotherapists and doctors. You do sometimes find an exercise physiologist out training people in gyms and in football teams and things like that, but most of the time, we spend our time in the middle, working with people with chronic conditions, so for me, I specialise in the disability area but there are lots of exercise physiologists who may specialise in oncology, diabetes, arthritis. Dorte Bladt: So when you mention those, do you mean exercise physiologists may work for example with someone following surgery for breast cancer who may have trouble moving their arm. Is that what you mean? Anna Campbell: Absolutely. Yes. So, exercise – the more they study it, the more they realise if it could be put into a pill, every single person on the planet would be taking it and every single doctor would be prescribing it and, basically, the government would be fully subsidising it.   Dorte Bladt: However, there’s no money in it so… Anna Campbell: Exactly. So exercise is, fortunately for us, finding its way into so many treatment modalities such as a female who may be suffering from breast cancer. The exercise can not only help with the outcomes of the chemotherapy but it can also help that person feel better throughout the chemotherapy whilst also treating side effects of the chemotherapy such as oedema or swelling, lack of movement through the body, pain in the body, all those types of things.   Dorte Bladt: So that’s obviously not your chosen field? Anna Campbell: No. It’s not my specialty. I certainly have an interest in it and follow, I guess, all of the research that’s coming out in those areas but, fortunately, I found myself in a very specific area which keeps me really busy in the paediatrics space. Dorte Bladt: How did you end up there? Anna Campbell: Interesting story. So we’re going back to 2002 when I graduated university. I was probably not one of the first exercise physiologists but I was one of the few that came out of the first round of the university degree. I’m showing my age now. Nobody really knew what exercise physiologists wer...

Newcastle infant chiropractor, Felicity Cook, shares her preparation and experience with bringing beautiful little Ivy into the world with Dorte Bladt. Intro: Flourishing Families with Dorte Bladt, the Switched On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive. Dorte Bladt: We’re going to do something really different today. We’ve got our own super mum, Felicity Cook, on the podcast today. Instead of asking your experience with work, we’re actually going to have a little bit of a chat about birth. Now, birth is a very personal experience – a good birth, a not so good birth, some are challenging – but I think many of us get scared… we sort of attract the bad stories. So we’re just here just to have a chat about a happy birth story. Felicity Cook: Yeah. Exciting! Dorte Bladt: Yes, so introduce us to the birth. Felicity Cook: So little Ivy was born back in March. We did, we actually were quite lucky. We worked hard on it but we were lucky to have a nice, straightforward birth. So a nice positive birth story, so we’re lucky. Dorte Bladt: That’s good. What were the things that – you obviously had a little bit of an idea of what you wanted. I think we all have an idea. What was your vision? What was it that you were looking to achieve? Felicity Cook: Well, for me, I wanted to make sure that I had the best birth that could allow my child to have the best darn life. That was kind of my aim. So at the end of the day, if I had to make choices that meant that her safety was paramount then I would do that, but I wanted to also make sure I can have close to natural delivery as possible. So that was my ideal and so was Ivy’s, as you can hear. So really, I wanted it to be intervention-free, if possible, and work towards that. Dorte Bladt: So that was your vision. What sort of action steps to take? What plans did you put in place to try to achieve that? Felicity Cook: Well, I made sure that I had the best support I could. Initially, when it came out to it, I wanted to make sure I had the care providers that would support that vision and who understood that vision – so I did. I went and actually met with a couple of obstetricians and then I also met with the midwives and I came away from that feeling like the midwifery quality of care was intuitively what I needed to do for me and I felt amazingly supported in that. That was great and also then having the support team around me too, so knowing that my partner was on board and he was happy with that too. Then making choices towards the end that enabled that all were on board with that too, so antenatal education and books and those kinds of things that helped along with it. Dorte Bladt: So what sort of antenatal team did you have? Felicity Cook: Well, I had my amazing midwives, my primary midwife, and she was there pretty much throughout the whole care for me. So from when I booked in at 20 weeks with the hospital and with the birth centre. I had some really good antenatal that was privately arranged and then I also had my chiropractor. That was a big part for me for lots of reasons and I had that all the way through from basically prior to conception, so I thank you.   Dorte Bladt: Anytime. Felicity Cook: Towards the end, I also did some acupuncture as well, too. That was my support team. Dorte Bladt: And when you were looking for support, what sort of support were you interested in? Felicity Cook: I knew to have the birth that I wanted to have, I knew that I had to have the options of being active for as long as possible. So I wanted somebody who would support the idea of active birth if I...