Dear readers,


I have just been accepted as a new subscriber to the Lactnet, and have been
reading the instructions. I will keep the instructions close by in the near
future so I won't make any mistakes. First of all I have to introduce myself
they say, so here I go.

My name is Siemian Berghuijs. I am married with Don, who is chief fire
officer in the city of Rotterdam, World port number one and one of the
largest city's in the Netherlands. We live in Zoetermeer which is not far
from there. We have three children. Don, 20 jears of age, breastfed for only
10 days, the classical failure. Because of that failure I started reading on
breastfeeding and joined LLL, I never stopped reading on the subject since.
David was born in 1981 ( 16 now) and I so much whised breastfeeding to be a
succes that time, I nearly failed again. David stoped breastfeeding when he
was three years old and I was pregnant with Debora. She had her 13th
birthday on new years eve, and her first period a week earlier. She was the
perfect breastfeeding baby in the beginning. I found out the value of
frequent breastfeeding the first two or three days. She started growing from
the start. I breastfed her for 5 years. I have been enjoying almost every
moment of my 8 years of breastfeeding.

I became a LLL leader in 1984 as well and are a leader reserve since last year.
Being a LLL leader was an wonderfull time. I spent 6 years in the Dutch
board as well and perhaps I never learned as much about mothering,
counseling, but also PR, printing, translating, etc as in those LLL years.

In 1992 I was one of the first ten IBCLC's in my country. Since then we did
an enormous amount of work. We started a foundation that had to take care of
future Lactation Consultant education. We have a regular training course in
one of our regular health care training institutes. The second group of
IBCLC's graduated in 1994. We have been having courses starting every year
since then and have 60 IBCLC's in our country at the moment. 40 will do the
IBLCE exam this year and another 40 next year. Almost all of our student
come from regular health care institutions. They are most of them nurses,
midwives, some are MD's and some are maternity nurses with homecare birth
centers. It is wonderfull to see how interested the regular health care is
in our profession.

We founded an association as well, the NVL (Nederlandse Vereniging van
Lactatiekundigen). At the moment I am president of the NVL. It is our duty
to see to everything on national level, the ILCA is doing on international
level. Getting official government recognition for our profession is one of
the tasks, as well as reimbursement.

I am 45 years of age and I started off as a history student, isn't that fun.

Siemian Berghuijs, IBCLC
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