I wanted to thank June & Jean on their insightful and supportive posts regarding WIC. As a WIC nutritionists & LC I understand the criticism for the volumes of formula given out by the program. It saddens me to see it in writing i.e. Riordan 2005 pg 18 where it black & white it says that WIC spends $578 million/year on formula, because us breastfeeding professionals know what a difference even a sliver of that would do if it were spent on breastfeeding promotion, supporting WIC moms & us, & multiplying our bf efforts by assisting with the training of more WIC personel to become CLEs & IBCLCs. However, I also know all that we do on a limited budget & what a difference we make for our moms & their babies. Our moms get breastfeeding education (like June/Jean said) that even non-WIC moms don't. What they do with it many times depends on their life (support, return to work, etc) & many times their unfortunate hospital experience. Many of the hospitals in Los Angeles are abissmal when it comes to inpatient/outpatient breastfeeding support. We now have a program where I enroll newborns over the phone early, using this technique my EBF rates have gone from 15% to 40-60%. However, many moms state their babies are given formula in the hospitals by the nurses even when thay asked them not too. It is then our/my difficult job to try to get them to confide in their body/breastfeeding again & deconstruct the erroneous image of breastfeeding thay have, it does not always work, many days you feel discouraged & deflated, but then as we all know in lactation you get 1 success story & it is all worth it. No matter the outcome, when moms tell you that no one ever explained & educated them about breastfeeding like I/we did, I know that I am in the right place, no matter how many other moms ask for formula. Like Jean says there are always things to improve, but like my mentor Gini Baker (San Diego, CA) writes at the bottom of her e-mails writes, "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." Vanessa M. Annibali, MS, IBCLC La Cienega WIC Center Nutritionist/Lactation Consultant (310) 945-3696 [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html