 Alright, so now I have the absolute pleasure and honor of introducing our speaker today. So Dr. Mary K. Keller is a certified family life educator and coach, a certified education infant massage instructor, and a TEDx Tallahassee speaker. Outside of her family life education practice, which you can find at www.merrykkeller.com, Dr. Keller is the Chair of the Applied Family Science Master's Program at Wilmington University, 100% online, which is very cool in this day and age. She teaches research to practice and parenting education, and I'll throw the link to that in the chat afterwards. Dr. Keller is the Vice President of the Board of Infant Massage USA and the Chair of the Education and Research Committee. She's also on the Research Committee of the Family Life Coaching Association. Mary K. is presented at international, national, regional, and statewide conferences. Mary K. achieved a PhD in Human Sciences, Family Studies from Florida State University, a Master's in Public Administration from Utah State University, and a Bachelor's Degree from Weber State University in Psychology, all while raising her three children as a single parent. When she graduated with her doctorate, her son and granddaughter watched her dissertation defense and her son said, Mom, are you done yet? He was two when she went back for her undergraduate degree. I love that story. Mary K. has worked in the area of family and children in a variety of roles over the last 30 years, developing a child-focused parenting education programs as Director of the Box Elder Family Support Center, as a parent education specialist in substance abuse prevention and child abuse prevention. Mary K. was the lead on getting the center into the state legislative bucket, and in the following year, obtaining an increase in the legislative budget for all-time centers located in her state. Mary K.'s area of specialization is infancy from zero to three. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Mary K. Okay. Just to make sure I was unmuted there and there are my slides. I am really excited to be here. I think I pushed on the wrong button. I'm going to cancel something there. Hang on one second. Okay. So I'm just delighted to be here again. I presented for the Virtual International Day of the Midwives back in 2015. I had such a great time, and I was so excited to be able to present again this time. So originally, I had done my research on five fathers, five first-time fathers who had learned how to massage their children, and the results came back very positive for attachment and bonding. But I further started to develop another article and based that on expanding the framework of midwife repractices, and one of them was looking at the family ecology and the vulnerability. So currently, we have 90% of the fathers that are involved with mothers at the time of the birth when their first infant is born. And new fathers do step into this role of fathering of little support from family systems. Transitioning into this role is often very stressful and even more so sometimes for the fathers than the mothers. And if you think about the way we socialize boys and girls, that seems pretty reasonable because I know as a child, I was allowed to play with dolls and someone was there to coach me on, you know, if I pick the baby up by its feet, then they tell me, no, that's not how we had, we hold a baby. Well, my brothers on the other hand were not allowed to play with dolls back then. I know times have changed and we're moving fast forward in this new generation and I'm very excited about that. So furthermore, the marital relationship is negatively impacted, as parents suggest to their new roles. And this change may also impact the attachment to their infant. Mothers and fathers may experience both mothers and fathers, by the way, may experience postpartum depression. And then the family ecology outcomes. Fathers reported a desire to support the mother and the infant by relieving the mother of the caregiving activity. So what that came from was when I first asked them why they wanted to be in the research. Each one of the five fathers and realized they didn't know each other. They were in separate locations and they said, I don't have a breast. And I said, what do you mean by that? And they said, I don't know what to do to see the baby when he's upset. And I could see that my wife, my the mother of the baby needs a break. And he said, I just wish, you know, that each one of them said they wish they had something that they could do. So during that research project, again, fathers demonstrated attachment constructs during the infant caregiving activities. A lot of the fathers changed the time of day according to how their infant was responding to the infant massage. And these attachments are different with each parent as well as different child outcomes that have been linked to each parent. The impact should be one of inclusivity rather than competition between these two roles and hence providing a stronger support for the family. So fathers aren't in competition with this. They just want to be able to step up and have some, you know, think about it for, you know, hundreds of years. It was mostly the mother's responsibility. And now they're trying to find their way in the role as well. The quality of the relationship between the mother and the father strongly supported by the involvement of the father with the baby and vice versa. Now, what does this mean to birthing professionals? Birthing professionals have direct access to both the mother and the father and the infant, both pre and post birthing. There is an opportunity to support strong engagements between all members of the family by exhibiting the value of the fathers in the communication process through acknowledgement, eye contact, purposeful conversation. Each is critical and essential to the development of the healthy family ecology. One of the things that happened when I was doing the research is that often I would be out with friends and somebody would somebody would always make the mistake of asking me about my research, which I could talk for hours on. And I was very excited to share with them. And afterwards, there were fathers that were, if we were in a restaurant, they were at different tables. If we were at an event, they would come over and they'd say, I couldn't help but hear you. I hope you don't mind my eavesdropping. And they would share with me how when they went to the mothers, to the OBGYN, to the birth care practitioner, they would ask questions. And they said, I felt like a stranger because they would turn to my wife or to the mother and they would answer the question as if she had asked it. So they felt like they were interlopers. And so you can see how they need to kind of be engaged and be a part of it and realize it's what's best also for the mother for her to see him supporting and being engaged with it. So we want to encourage that. So we develop opportunities for the fathers to support each other and bond such as fathering classes. You know, it'd be great to not only have parent classes in which mothers and fathers come to, but maybe some extra support for fathers where they feel like they're just finding their way. The emotional bit. So the child outcomes are impacted by father involvement. There are many emotional benefits. Even from birth, children who have an involved father are more likely to be emotionally secure, be confident to explore their surroundings. And as they grow older, have better social connections with their peers. These children are also less likely to get into trouble at home, school, or in the neighborhood. Infants who receive high levels of infection from their fathers and babies whose fathers respond quickly to their cries and who play together are more securely attached. That is, they can explore their environment comfortably when a parent is nearby and can readily accept the comfort of their parent after a brief separation. A number of the studies suggest they are also more sociable and popular with other children throughout early childhood. Intelligence children with involved caring fathers have better educational outcomes. A number of studies have also suggested fathers who involve nurturing and playful with their infants the children have higher IQs as well as better linguistic and cognitive capacities. Now, when I say that, that doesn't mean they don't have those. They don't have that bump with the mother as well. But when you have two parents doing it, that is what supports the higher levels of intelligence, their ability to be able to communicate with us. Toddlers with involved fathers go on to start school with higher levels of academic readiness. They are more patient and can handle the stresses and frustrations associated with schooling more readily than children with less involved fathers. And then in academic, the influence of a father's involvement on academic achievement extends into adolescence and young child. Take my screen froze there a minute. The influence of father's involvement on academic achievement extends into adolescence and young adulthood. Numerous studies find that an active and nurturing style of fathering is associated with better verbal skills and intellectual functioning and academic achievement among adolescents. For instance, a 2001 U.S. Department of Education study found that highly involved biological fathers had children who were 43% more likely than other children to earn mostly and is 33% less likely than other children to repeat a grade. You know, one of the authors that I really love, I want to start and say this, is Andrea Dusset. She comes out of Vancouver, Washington. She has done 20 years or more of research on fathers. And I really found it interesting. I mean, it's a big book and you have to like research in order to read her book, but she wrote a book called Do Men Mother. One of the things that I noticed in there is that men from all different stations and backgrounds had commonalities in how they parented. And one of the things that she pointed out was with mothers, we are kind of primed to protect the child. We want to make sure the child is safe. Where fathers kind of come at it from a different aspect and they actually push the children a little bit to stretch themselves. And so those two things that nurturing and that desire to protect and keep them safe and keep them alive and then fathers challenging them just a little bit really supports the child in their development. And I want to say opens them up to a variety of different fields that doesn't necessarily define them by their gender. For instance, for little girls, it may be that they get more into sports. For little boys, it might be that they have more emotional expression. It just depends on the culture that we live in and the dynamics that are going on in the area in which we live. What we know about infant neural development. I want to stop here and ask you a question. I'd like to know, does anybody know how much neural wiring goes on in an infant from the time they're born until about at least three years of age? Does anybody want to guess how fast their neural development is going? We just have a quick question while folks are typing in the chat, Mary Kay. There was a question from Jeba. Is there any data on single parent or non-binary involvement? There is. I didn't include that in this research because I wanted to go bigger, broader, and generalized. There is also data. They do look at single parents. There's a lot of data on both. What I was really intrigued was that there are fathers raising children by themselves, as well as mothers. There are also grandparents. In the USA, for instance, there are more children actually in the home, grandchildren in the homes, and grandparents than any of the 50 foster care states. We had a lot of grandfathers who were raising grandchildren as single grandparents and grandmothers as well. There is data. There is specific data on those subgroups. Thank you, Mary Kay. And thank you, Jeba, for that question. Oh, and there was a follow-up question there. I haven't seen a response yet to Mary Kay's question. So I'll just share with you this follow-up question from Jeba. And then maybe if you want to ask the question again, Mary Kay, that you had just asked to the folks on the chat. So Jeba's follow-up question was, what were the results like for those demographics that you had mentioned? Now, for the ones that I just mentioned, I have not collected that, nor have I put it. Like I said, I kept mine more generalized across the board for fathers and for mothers. And so if you want to follow up with me later, I'd certainly be glad to go find those articles for you and send them to you. Great. Thank you. Jeba says thank you as well. So Mary Kay, maybe you do want to repeat that question that you had asked back in case folks are still thinking about it? So I was just curious if anybody knew how fast a baby's brain starts to develop the neural wiring, how fast it goes within the first zero to three years. That's a good question. Does anyone have any guesses in the chat? Oh, we have someone typing. Let's see. You're testing my knowledge, Mary Kay. I've been out of classes for a couple months. And I'm like, I should know that. I'm a midwifery student, but I have to review this fall. Somebody said, the fastest it ever will. And they are quite right. A child's brain undergoes an amazing period of development from birth to three, producing more than one a million neural connections each second. So the development of the brain is influenced by many factors, including a child's relationships, experiences, and environment. A million neural connections each second. When I taught my parenting class, I calculated that out to, OK, there are 1,440 minutes in a day. There are 60 seconds in that minute. And by the time you do that, they are like little supercomputers, seriously, for the first three years. There's a lot going on in there. A lot of times, parents don't understand that. They're sleeping because their brain needs to wire quickly. And they're tired. And then other times, they need to be up and be active because they're trying to put all of that to use as they gather that information. So according to the Mayo Clinic in utero, the ears began to stick out from the head in about 18 weeks. And the fetus may become able to hear. At this stage, the brain starts to designate the areas that were governed from smell, taste, vision, touch, and sound. An infant can hear sounds from outside of the womb. This is the perfect opportunity to begin conversations reading and singing to the infant. It does not matter if the infant can distinguish between sounds as we all start learning about infant development in utero. It is possible for infants to hear the voices of family matters, including the siblings, including all members of the family. And the pre-bonding activities will not disturb the infant. So that's the perfect time. When I do parrot coaching with fathers, I'll tell them, read to your wife's stomach. Sing a song. Talk to the baby. Call the baby if you've picked a name. Call them by name if you know what the sex or gender is. And you've already picked it. And it doesn't matter what the gender is. But basically, if you've already got a name for your child and you want them to recognize you, I love seeing Barry T. Brazelton when he used to do his presentations, because he would talk about how he would take the baby over to the mother and put the baby between him and her and have her call. And the baby would turn his head. And then he would go and do the same thing with the father. And the baby would turn its head towards the father, because the baby had heard him in utero. So post-birth, a child's brain undergoes an amazing period of development for birth to three, producing more than a million neural connections in each second. The development of the brain is influenced by many factors, including a child's relationships, experiences, and environment. Understanding some basic concepts about baby brains can better prepare parents for a child's developmental milestones, nurture healthy growth, and help them build strong, loving relationships with their child. This is from 0 to 3. And they know that brain science can sound intimidating, so we break it all down and make the information accessible and straightforward for parents and caregivers. And one of the things I think that's very important, like, for instance, in my parenting class, I had an aha moment here recently. The parenting education that we do in the United States, I have noticed, seems to be more about making the parents more comfortable with the baby or the child. And it's about how to tell them to manage the child. But we really don't evaluate parenting programs from the child's perspective to determine if it is benefiting the child on their emotional development and how they feel about the change in their parents, which is something that I think that we need to change going forward. The implications for fathers include inclusion provides the opportunity for bonding and engagement during the labor and the birth cross. I mean, everybody who helps the mother have the baby has a great opportunity to help that family come together and bond at that birth. Research indicates that fathers desire to be involved in the care of the mother and the infant. But they often feel intimidated, like it's been predominantly a female world. And so now they feel like they almost need permission sometimes to enter into that. Not all fathers. This is just generalizations. Fathers feel confident and confident when they afforded opportunities to actively engage with their infant. What birthing professionals can do to support the family ecology are to accept the differences. Fathers are affected even more than by mothers by contextual factors such as personal, relational, cultural, institutional factors can support or inhibit fathers' interactions with their children. As an example, in general fathers' interactions with their children decreases if they're experiencing unemployment, divorce, relationship conflicts, and proximity to the child. These factors often create barriers mostly for the fathers and when these barriers are removed, fathers who are motivated, confident, and perceived that they are skilled will be involved with the lives of their children. So that's some important information for us to look at when we are first introduced to parents or prospective parents as well as in our parenting classes. Awareness, fathers communicated prior to research in activities, here's the part I was talking about earlier, felt like an interloper during the pregnancy, felt a loss of the partner's relationship during pregnancy. Often the medical staff and professionals who provided ancillary services did not hold eye contact with them when they were asking questions and or ignored them. What action, what can we be done to provide an atmosphere of inclusivity of fathers and partners? One, enhanced communication skills, eye contact, reflective listening, I mean, it's bugging me that I'm realizing I need to keep looking at the camera and I like that contact as well. Reflective listening, repeating back to them what they said just so they feel heard and understood and then affirming statements. And it can be, sometimes if we're busy, we may not be so affirming but it's essential to be affirming. Number two, the responsiveness, providing contact information for support, getting them hooked up with other fathering groups, places where they can go, also to get what they need in becoming a parent. Follow up with the partner as an equal as well as the mother and then other fathering resources. So I talk a little bit about here about providing fathering supports, midwives recognize and engage, include the fathers as an equal in the family ecology from the first appointment up until the last aftercare point. I want to say that doesn't mean that midwives aren't doing this. I'm talking about generalization or we're global here. So in some areas of the world, it's probably just a given in other areas we're just catching on. Although hormones indeed support mothers in bonding with their infants at birth, it is equally important that the fathers understand that although their relationship with the child develops through different means, it can be equally as valid as the mother's relationship. And then for childbirth at educators include specific topics on the changes first time fathers experienced, including postpartum depression. You want to give that information out freely because they may not even understand what's happening to them or sometimes they may feel ashamed. They feel like they're an adequate parenting, all of the same things that we think of when if we experience postpartum depression. There are things that they can bonding activities. I teach infant massage, emotionally intelligent conversations and sign language to parents which also helps build their vocabulary and allows the baby to be able to communicate back. My first experience was this with my first granddaughter and my daughter taught her sign language and we use tea for toilet. And every time we'd change her diaper, she would do that. And one day I walked over and she was doing the tea and I checked her diapers and sure enough, she'd gone to the bathroom. She was the easiest baby to raise. I mean, there was like practically no crying ever because she could communicate. So encourage both parents to reach out for those type of services. And then parenting educators provide both parents an opportunity to support and strengthen the relationship with the infant immediately after birth through science-based education courses. And then I put a little plug in here for infant massage. The practice is powerful tool to engage families biologically. And one of the reasons is it hits on at least four of the five senses because bonding really is a chemical action. And so we engage through touch, we engage through sound, we engage through smell. They smell the babies. And so pretty much all five of us, it depends on whether it tastes, some parents I guess do lick the babies. And so they engage through those five senses. So give them plenty of opportunity to be able to bond with their children. Okay. The same benefits that mothers afford their infants by striking them after birth may be contributed to the father because infants respond emotionally to the parents' touch. Now this is something that I'm really passionate about. I wish I could get these parents while they're pregnant, have them massage. If it's their first-time parent, we can use it, we use the doll anyway in infant massage. I never touch other people's babies. I am not a licensed massage therapist but I am certified in infant massage education. And so oftentimes if, I have had one, maybe two fathers that came in while they were pregnant and we gave each the mother and the father a doll in order for them to practice those strikes on the baby. And then I encourage them to do it after birth if the situation provided itself. Now I understand sometimes there's emergencies and that can't happen, but wherever possible, it would be great to have both parents massaging the baby. And then there are the references. I was kind of rushing a little bit because I didn't want to take up the whole time. There are some fathering resources because I thought there might be some questions. Awesome. So if anyone has any questions, please feel free to throw those in the chat. You can also raise your hand if you'd like to ask your question using your mic and I can give you the ability to speak. I just wanted to share a couple of little comments that had come in while you're speaking, Mary Kay. Bupe had said, great research, Mary. Thank you very much. I see that Lorraine had said, busy little brains when you were talking about the neural development. So I just wanted to share those. Yeah, they are very busy. Right? Yeah. It is incredible. I know. I was like, you know, that's like a super computer. You know, and sometimes parents are very open to parenting education. And what I've been saying is, you know, I remember when my mom and dad, I didn't know this dates me, they were thrilled to death to get a color TV. We're living in a new age, in a new period. And I said, we update our computers regularly. We update our cell phones. It only makes sense to update our awareness of where parent education is gone and the new things that have come out. Because we're constantly learning about babies and their brains and children and development. I mean, it's no longer stagnant. You know, it just keeps developing just as fast as everything else does. Absolutely. I had a question just to start us off, Mary Kay, while folks are perhaps typing. So, there was one situation you described that really stuck with me regarding, so I'll use the terms gestational and non-gestational parent. It's a thing that a lot of folks are doing now, or there's different versions, but to refer to people in a non-gendered way. So you talked about, you know, a gestational parent and a non-gestational parent standing next to each other. The non-gestational parent asks a question and they respond to the other person, like the doctor or the OB or the midwife responds to the other person. So they feel completely excluded. So I wonder in your research and in your experience, you've come across any strategies that people use as whether, you know, bystanders or people experiencing that situation to sort of mitigate that. Because it can be quite a complex and quite an uncomfortable situation to deal with. And I'm wondering if you have any sort of tips and tricks. So when you said bystander that through me, just a little bit, are you talking about, so for instance, say we have both people in there and they're at a, maybe a checkup or something, you know, before the babies do, and they feel like they're being excluded, are you saying how that person could then moderate that and bring them back in? Is that what you're asking me? I just wanna make sure I understood the question. Yeah, yeah, good question. I mean, I guess, I don't know whether you would have experiences that would apply to all of them or whether you're a midwife in the room or you're a midwifery student in the room, that's sort of why it comes to me in that perspective or maybe you're the gestational parent and you're hearing your partner being excluded. And you know, how do you sort of like do that in a way that doesn't, you know, turn the person against you? When you're challenging them, maybe. I think, well, I think there's just a level of assertiveness. You know, I used to teach a communication course and one of the things that I found is if you use the word you, people's defenses go up. But if you say I, you know, and you say I am comfortable with my partner being left out of the conversation, would you mind including them in? I don't think that's as challenging as if you, you know, you said, well, you're leaving them out. You know, so just by gently asking that question and saying I'm really concerned I would like for him to be or her to be involved in the conversation as well. And, you know, sometimes it might not be a partner. It might be a grandparent in the room, you know. But to make them feel more comfortable because, you know, as a woman in labor and I've given birth several times, had midwives, loved my midwives. And, you know, I didn't think about that back then. You know, when I was having kids, I've got grandkids now. I didn't think about it at the time. But I do remember thinking back on it and realizing he was just kind of off to the side, didn't know what to do, waiting for somebody to tell him if he could even come up next to me. I mean, he wasn't very assertive in that environment, you know. So he wasn't going to speak up and ask for anything. We had discussions about what my birth plans were, you know, but when I was with the midwife, I did have my first one in the hospital. That's what convinced me to go with midwives after that. But, you know, the first time around he didn't know what to say even though we had a birth plan because when he got in there, he wasn't prepared for the intimidation of being in a medical facility and having the doctors and nurses telling him what to do. And it just kind of all fell apart, which didn't make me happy either because then decisions were made that were outside of my control and I was dependent on him to speak up, you know. And like I said, that was, I now look at that as being prehistoric days because everything's changed so much, you know. But we just want to, you know, I think, you know, if I could go back and do it knowing what I know now, I would have just insisted that they include him and would have asked people to just take a breath and take a minute and done it in an assertive manner that's not, you know, it's not confrontational if we don't act confrontational. So if we just are assertive and use eye messages and sometimes you have to repeat yourself, you know and say it twice to really get that thought process through, but it's hard for the woman in labor to have to be the one to do it, you know. So it's helpful, I think if there's, you know if there's another, like you had said, you had a midwife, you had a student midwife in the room. I don't know who else would be in the room, but, you know, if people around each other help each other be conscious of this, I think that we can change how this has been happening. Thank you so much, Mary Kay. That was a really interesting response, I appreciate it. Everyone, I just wanna put a quick reminder to feel free to put your hand up if you'd like to ask a question or throw something in the chat. And I had another quick question in the meantime, Mary Kay. Another point that really stood out to me is the idea of parenting classes that expect people to learn how to manage the child. And that really stood out to me not thinking about, you know, what are the impacts on the child. And I'm curious if there are any parenting classes that you've seen or done, like seen in the research, where they really exemplify the opposite, where they look at, you know, how is this affecting everyone in the family, everyone in the community? Is there any examples of that that you've come across that are interesting to you? Well, I've been trained in numerous parenting programs and teaching the parenting education and also as the research class, we look at a lot of different parenting programs. I'm not saying there aren't any out there. I'm just saying I haven't found one yet. And one of the things that really brought this home to me is I had a friend who was on Facebook at the time and she kept asking me if I would present at a conference called America's Conference on Ending Course of Control. And I kept resisting putting her off. I was weird because I didn't say no but I just kept thinking, hey, I know if I wanna do this, you know. And at the last minute, I finally said yes, started pulling the information together and I was amazed at what I discovered about the United States. We have no system in the United States that doesn't use coercion, not one. Wow. And taking a look at how that affects children, like for instance, here in the, there's a term I wanna throw out to you. It's called childism. It's on an equal level with racism, sexism, ageism. And I just discovered that word myself but I had been feeling it for years in my gut that I honestly was not, I was born in the US over in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey but my dad was in the military and he quickly deployed when I was young. Not even, I don't even think I was one. They went to Japan. I had two brothers, identical twin brothers born there. So I was a big sister by the time I was three and then we used to tease them that they were made in Japan or they were made in the USA but born in Japan. And then four months after my mother had given birth to the twins, she was pregnant again. And so my sister was made in the USA but born in the United States. We weren't in the United States when he was deployed back very long before we went to France. Now I came back on American soil when I was just shy of my seventh birthday. My grandfather had had a heart attack so my mom and the children, we all came back to the United States. My dad came back a little bit later. My first entry into the school system here, I remember telling my grandma, I don't think they like kids here. It was so different for me coming back into a U.S. school system after having been over in France and going to kindergarten, start in first grade there. And when I was in Japan, I played with all the other Japanese kids in the neighborhood. My parents didn't like to live on base. They liked to live off a base. So we got very into the cultures there and it was just a whole new experience to me coming back into the U.S. But really to take a look at how those parenting programs, it's gotta be more than manipulation. We need to, there's a really great book out if you haven't heard about it. Dr. Lori DeSaltis has written a book called, Connection Over Compliance. Because compliance also kind of, it assumes that there's no consent. And if we really wanna make a difference in the lives of our children, we have to be able to forge that connection emotionally. Dr. Mark Brackett came out with a book called Permission to Feel This Less. Actually, I think it's been out but I just found it during COVID. It's amazing what all we found during COVID with all these free webinars. But he talks in there about how learning actually doesn't come through cognition, which is how I had been trained in my undergraduate degree in psychology was that it was through cognition. It comes through, learning actually comes through the emotional connection to the material. When we're emotionally connected to the material, we're more motivated to learn it, to understand it and then apply it. Thank you so much, Mary Kay. And I see there's, I'll just do a quick time check where it's 7.43, so maybe if we can take a couple of minutes on the, there's one question that's come in and then we'll start to wrap things up. So Paula has asked, hi Mary Kay, did you use any of the previous research from Dr. Tiffany Fields? She was an amazing proponent of infant massage back in the 90s, particularly preterm infants and did some great research. She is the queen of infant massage. A matter of fact, that was one of the places that I first got interested in. I was clear out in Utah, up in Ogden. I don't know how they managed, but they had her come and speak at this conference and it was the first time I had ever heard her speak or heard about her. And then probably about six months later after I heard her talk, and I even went up and talked to her in person. I was working as a center director. I had originally trained on the nurturing parenting program, which was developed by Stephen and Juliana Babelik out in Park City, Utah. And they were doing their training there. So my very first position, I was trained on the nurturing parenting program and implemented it in a, back then it was called the Parent and Child Centers. I think now they've blossomed and grown around the country and they're called Early Head Start. And he introduced us at one section in there to the idea of infant massage. Well, about a year and a half, two years later, I was then the center director of Family Support Center and across my desk came a flyer from, I just, her name just went, but Juliana Babelik. And she was doing a 40 hour week long course down at the massage therapy school down in Salt Lake City. So I drove an hour and a half over a day to get down there and take this. And it was, I didn't even realize what was happening to me at the time because I was so enamored with learning it and watching people demonstrate it. She had two parents come in and one was a mother who brought her baby in and sat down and started massaging it. The other was a father back then. And he came in in a business suit, his briefcase, his baby under the arm, the baggie for the baby over his shoulder, sat down, put his cell phone to the side, started massaging this baby. And you know, we were all so quiet because it was like there wasn't anybody in the room but him and his baby, they were engaged. And I still get chills when I think about that. Now, that was back in 1995, I believe, and I became an infant massage instructor in 1997. Who knew that my research 15 years later would be focused in on fathers? I didn't even realize it when I was completing my doctoral program. What happened was I did a critical review and of course Tiffany Fields' research was all in there. I did a review of about 212 articles, narrowed it down to 33 on infant massage. And that's when I noticed there were only two articles that focused on fathers. And I thought there's a huge gap in literature. So that, I took that back to my dissertation committee and they said, you need to be looking at fathers. And that's what sent me on this evolution. The TED Talk that I did on, I have to tell you, I'm not one who normally signed up to go do talks. I'm very introverted, I'm kind of really shy. I find it very depleting sometimes to do a lot of talking with groups. But this TED Talk just fell on my lap and I was sitting there looking at it. It was an email, I don't even know how it came to me. But I was sat there and looked at it for a little while and I thought, oh, what the heck, might as well give it a go, right? And some of those thoughts that I had in that TED Talk actually happened as I was speaking. So it was just like, it was like I found my purpose. I was so excited. Thank you so much, Mary Kay. And thank you, Paula said, excellent. Thanks for talking about Dr. Fields. She was always a shero for me back then. That's fantastic. Thanks for your comments, Paula. We do need to start wrapping up. Unfortunately, there seems to be lots to talk about in the subject, but I'm sure it can all be, you know, continue to connect through LinkedIn. I know Mary Kay had shared the LinkedIn in the chat.