"As long as we are taking breastfeeding out of the medical setting of the
hospital, how about remembering to be very careful not to make LCs into the
new
medical profession with the ownership of breastfeeding knowledge?"

Magda, what you've said is SO IMPORTANT! I very much value lactnet and our
other forums for professional support & sharing of experience & knowledge,
but I occasionally have grave fears about the trend "the profession" seems
to be taking. It seems to me to be a very delicate balance to maintain, this
simultaneous upgrading of the field of knowledge and recognition of the
profession as such without taking it out of the hands of women. Where it has
always been and where it belongs.

In a way, I think our role as professionals needs to be somewhat a
"background" one - I guess ideally we would educate the "professionals"
already working with birthing and parenting women, so that the need for us
wouldn't be so great. Mostly what we do now is clean up & correct problems
created by poor management (resulting from inadequate knowledge of
lactation) in the first place - we "fix" the stuff that wouldn't have been
broken if it had been dealt with right in the first place. So ideally we
could all go behind the scenes, educating med students and nursing &
midwifery students and childbirth educators and nursery school teachers and
caregivers and anyone that has anything at all to do with mothers and/or
babies.

In the meantime, we (both initialed and "lay") are needed to give the direct
help and support to moms and babies that they don't get elsewhere. I find
myself torn between knowing that one doesn't need a degree or a credential
to do this - one needs knowledge and experience and compassion for our
sisters and love for those silly little babies - and concern that if you are
representing yourself as a "lactation consultant" there do need to be some
standards behind the title. But I really chafe at the notion that "we" are
becoming "the new medical profession with the ownership of BFing
knowledge" - yet I see it happening.

How do we find the balance here? My feminist, anti-authoritarian soul
absolutely rebels against the ownership of BF knowledge by any profession or
group or cluster of initials. Yet the forces so destructive of innate and
centuries-old breastfeeding practices actually *listen* to us, and even
modify their practices, when we can show those credentials after our names.
Maybe the best hope is that the need for us as a "profession" is temporary,
that mothers and sisters and aunts and doulas and wise women will take back
what should belong to them, once we've remembered what we seem to have
"forgotten" in a few short decades.

Cathy Bargar. RN, IBCLC (see, I've got my initials - do they make me any
wiser? No, but I am more knowledgeable as a result of having gone through
the process of getting them...)

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