I need to think this out some more but had to chime in on this topic.
I've been a LLL Leader for 21 years this month, and I've been an IBCLC
since 1990, and yes I still do both, personally I have seen them as
complementing one another not competing. In S. Calif, I was a lone
Leader in a group and had a private practice. It was not well known in
the group that I was also an IBCLC unless the mother knew me well, or
except for the mothers who had started out as clients and who I had
referred to the group. I referred most of my clients to a LLL group
because they needed on going 'support' that they did not need my
professional help for, and I referred them to any group in the area not
just 'my' group. What I have seen is that some mothers do need and
appreciate a support group of some sort - some of them found some other
kind of support group - in their church or hospital, but there are some
mothers who just don't need that kind of contact. Once you've got them
on course and they have some resources, etc, they just go do their own
thing. Maybe they get the support they need from their family and
friends, I don't know. We all are different people and have different
needs. There will always be those moms who came to one LLL mtg and never
came back and you thought maybe you had 'lost' her, but you see her
months or even years later and she talks about how wonderful that
experience was, and how she has encouraged others to bf & contact LLL
etc. I saw those same kind of mothers as an LC. Everything was going
well - they just needed that reassurance.
I don't see things changing as quickly as you do Elaine, LLLI has been
around for 40 years and bf has seen the swing of the pendulum, just as we
have seen it in other health issues. Like birth. There are surges and
then the tide goes out for whatever reason. There is always an ebb and
flow. And even if we got the bf rates up I think we still have a long way
to go to educate the medical systems & providers. And I personally think
we will always need the professionals with the more specific knowledge
(IBCLC's), but I think we will always need the support group systems to
refer Moms to. I know my daughter is 23 y/o -well, in a couple weeks-
and is currently in the AF, and she tells me all these horror stories of
what she hears when she is in the gym and overhears young mothers talking
about breatfeeding, childbirth and mothering issues - it convinces me
that we are not as far along as we think we are. And when she is ready to
have babies, which will probably be a few years, I want LLLI to be there
for her. She may not need it in the same way I did. She is surrounded
by an already in place support system ( all of her 'other mothers' are
former co-Leaders of mine), her Dad is an HCP, and she has aunts and a
grandmother that breastfed, and she believes the mothering is just as
important - but still I know that she might need some input from someone
who is more her age and not her mother, etc. And i think part of the
reason that LLLI has lasted more than 40 years is because so many
families are nuclear - there is not a support system of knowledgeable
family members around.
When we moved to south Texas, I told my husband that I couldn't imagine
living in a town that did not have a LLL group available. So that has
been my top priority here, to start a group. In 20+ years I have seen so
many mothers empowered by the support group dynamic - it has to start
there, not just with informed medical professionals if it is going to
last long term. Who do mothers turn to when they are frustrated with a
nursing 2 yr old? Their HCPs are not who they talk to - they want to
talk to someone who has been there done that - as a mother. And it is
the support group system that empowered me to even consider that I could
be an IBCLC.
Just my $.02.
Katherine Catone, LLLL, IBCLC
Kingsville, Texas (way down south)
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