My gracious, you all come up with some interesting questions!
But these questions aren't really the run-of-the-mill situations IBCLCs
encounter day in and day out. I work in a hospital with 8000 births/year.
Yes, I see a mom who had an augmentation surgery once a week, smoking
only gets admitted to (!) every few weeks, Reynauds comes up only a few
times a year. Extended breastfeeding doesn't come up much in a professional
setting, because those moms have learned that it's LLL that really knows
breastfeeding. The IBCLCs who come from an RN-only background tend to be
much more focused on the early days of bfdg rather than the toddler and
beyond stages. I've seen a cleft palate once in four years.
So my question back to you is: Is anyone at Ivy Tech teaching the normal
course of breastfeeding## and the oh, so, important subtleties of what makes
a good latch for comfortable milk transfer? Without good milk transfer, supply
will suffer, growth will falter, and the more difficult questions you're asking will
become non-issues.
If you haven't read it yet, my current very favorite for a tremendous
foundation to the entire "world" of breastfeeding is Kathleen Kendall-Tackett &
Nancy Mohrbacher's *Breastfeeding Made Simple.* Please start with that.
Next read *The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.* Only after those two, go on
to whatever other aspects of breastfeeding may spark your curiosity.
Please be sure you've seen Kittie Frantz's "First Attachment" video with the
segments on Self-Attachment. Or watch babies placed skin-to-skin self-
attach during your clinicals. Have you watched the video at
www.breastcrawl.org? (Christina Smilie, do you have a video separate from
your wonderful lectures on Self-Attachment?)
I worry that Ivy Tech students are losing the big picture with so much focus
on specific, scientific details about unusual situations. The moms and babies
you'll be serving need you to know the very important fundamentals so you
can instill confidence in the mother that, yes, she can breastfeed her baby!
##Linda, the "normal course of breastfeeding" (as mentioned above) includes
natural weaning at whatever age the baby/child does it. To me, every mom is
entitled to breastfeed through her child getting the two-year molars because
that child is going to be waking up again several times a night. What's the
easiest way to put a child in pain back to sleep?
Also if you check the AAP's 1997 statement and compare it to the current
statement, I think you'll see they're trying to ease American women into the
idea of getting closer to the WHO recommendation of "shoot for two."
Please hang in there with your fascination for breastfeeding! From my field,
we're seeing more and more that breastfeeding in the early days truly
programs a baby/child/person's metabolism for life~~~not to mention all the
other benefits!
Wishing you the best of luck with all your studies---and an occasional nap,
too.
(No financial interest in any of the references mentioned, just great passion
and respect for what the authors have brought to us.)
Debbi Heffern, RD, IBCLC, LLLL
St. Louis MO
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