Hear! Hear! My sentiments exactly. I have actually worked out a lot
of the book in my head over 21 years of practice, but I'm thinking - why
isn't this taught? The book was just one big AHA after another for me.
I felt validated - that I wasn't the crazy lactonazi seeing these things
- and here was the validation for mothers who said things such as "I
just KNOW there is something wrong with this baby/ My doctor thinks I'm
crazy. "
-----Original Message-----
From: Lactation Information and Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of JOKR PANZER
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 8:42 AM
Subject: our profession
On another note, I have been reading Cathy Watson Genna's new book,
Supporting Sucking Skills in the Breastfeeding Infant. I feel like I
have just stumbled across the Rosetta stone,the key to helping the
mothers and babies I couldn't reach before. Cathy has taken an
interdisciplinary approach, drawing from medicine, child development,
speech language pathology, neurology, and more, and laid it all out and
organized it, in a way that perfectly articulates what we are seeing out
there in our consult rooms, both the normal and the "other"
presentations. It's dense. I have to really sit with it for a bit
before the info penetrates, that's my brain ossifying. Too bad I didn't
have this book ten years ago....
I am going to make a public confession: I have often felt like an
imposter in my work. In addition to my IBCLC credential I have an MS in
human development, (I studied mothers and babies in the childbearing
year) along the way I was LLL accredited and also a certified childbirth
instructor. Don't get me wrong, I'm legit. But there is something
missing in my education, and this book is the proof of that. That it
exists, that Cathy and her co-authors could put this together is
inspiring and thrilling, but it is also an indictment of the way IBCLC's
are educated. What they have written is a college textbook, which could
be (easily) a semester's worth of challenging, engaging material. But in
the absence of a degree program (I am aware that one or two exist) some
of us will read it and some won't.
I'm not saying that we need to be cookie cutter, stepford LC's, in our
education, but I am saying I earned my IBCLC fair and square, I strive
for excellence in my practice, and I don't know nearly enough to do my
job well when I get other than normal presentations at breast, at least
I know that. And I'm the expert!
What I don't have is a degree in human lactation, I'm quite sure few of
us do. Why not? Why do we each one of us have to piece it together and
carve out some kind of habitable, workable niche in our communities, why
the struggle? IBCLC's should be licensed members of the health-care team
who come out of an accredited degree program, separate from nursing,
with supervised clinicals in a variety of settings, demonstrable skills,
ready to step into jobs that pay an appropriate wage.
Best
Kristen Panzer, MS IBCLlC
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