I'm sorry if you understood my message as a disagreement with yours rather
than adding another dimension to the situations we all face - that of
maintaining respect among those who work with mothers.

I'm now working in Public Health, and have been taught by some excellent
Public Health Nursing professionals that my "patient" isn't the ONE family
we see, even though our responsibility is to connect them to services and
provide professional care.  So I think more in terms of "community
improvement" and "collaboration"...  

Even though I see individual mothers, my first responsibility (what I'm paid
for) is training of the Public Health Nurses who make home visits with me,
and looking out for the barriers that exist in the community and work on
them.  An example last week was a mom who was breastfeeding and was sent to
jail for 2 weeks (not drug related).  The jail did not facilitate a pump for
her, so now we're faced with trying to help her relactate.  We have had WIC
pumps delivered to the jail to help moms previously, so I now need to try to
fix this AGAIN...not by calling the nurse in the jail and criticizing her,
but by asking her what she would recommend we do to improve this situation -
and collaborating with her to do so.

Even though this mom will not be served, my goal is to fix the "community"
problem so that the NEXT mom can have what she needs.

I have moved into situations where the nurses didn't speak to the La Leche
League Leaders - because the Leaders told the moms that the nurses knew very
little about supporting a breastfeeding mother.  This was true - but it
didn't help the mother who was at the mercy of the nurses in the hospital
for the duration of her stay - nor did it help improve the situation.  When
I came in, I was a Leader AND a nurse - so I was able to communicate with
both camps and develop a way of offering education to the nurses AND suggest
ways the Leaders could support the moms without cutting down the nurses.

I moved into another area where the LCs didn't speak to each other - mostly
because moms bounced back and forth, each reporting to the other LC what the
previous LC had said.  This did NOT help the mom - and each LC then got more
and more stubborn about her criticism of the other:  "She ALWAYS uses pumps,
she's just trying to make more money" and "She uses nipple shields because
she really doesn't know how to get babies on to the breast" and "she thinks
tongue-tie needs to be surgically treated, but I've never seen this help -
she just doesn't know how to position babies correctly".  Even if these
criticisms were true, it didn't help the mom OR the community support
system.  Little by little, the word got out to the LCs that I didn't speak
badly of any of them - then when I called them, they were even willing to
listen!  (In fact the one who spoke about the tongue tie HAD a baby with a
tongue tie, came to see me and had the surgery done - much to her relief!)

This is not lying to the mother - it is providing her with the correct
information and letting HER realize who was helpful and who was not -
without my comments.  Believe me, the word gets out quickly without your
ever needing to openly stating it.

...then there's also the fact that one LC may be good with one
personality/type of mom and another will be better with another.  That has
been the salvation of me as a Leader who always has had co-leaders...moms
can choose who they want to call, who they feel most comfortable with.  As
I'm much older, I'm not hurt or upset if a mom calls my co-leader for coping
questions and then calls me when she thinks she has thrush or mastitis.  It
spreads the work better, too!  

The more DIFFERENT LCs there are, (capable, but different in approach and
style) the more the community will be served - which is the goal I think we
all have!

Again, I'm sorry if my post seemed to criticize yours - it was not my
intention, but rather to take the discussion on a different tangent and
increase awareness of this concern. There are many new Lactation
Professionals joining Lactnet all the time - and a varied series of
discussions I think help people to consider various paths and decide which
path is best for them.

Jeanette

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