Hello,
I joined the list yesterday, and thought I should introduce myself. I
am a part-time family practitioner, part-time student, full-time mum in
Perth, Western Australia. I have been working in general practice for
around ten years, with an emphasis on women's health and paediatrics. I
graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1991. We had
fairly good undergraduate education in lactation early on in biochem
class, but postgraduate training in general practice pretty much
ignored the issue. In my six month OBGYN residency, lactation issues
were considered the business of the midwives and LCs, not the doctors,
and that remains the prevalent attitude today - leading to what I would
consider woeful ignorance of lactation issues on the part of most
doctors (and I include myself in this!) I guess the doctors all see the
LCs doing a great job, so they just decide to stay out of it - but this
in my opinion leads to conflicting advice and very poor understanding
of areas in which LCs and doctors need to work together - eg
medications in breastfeeding, infant failure to thrive, management of
undersupply, etc.
Recent childbirth (Luke is eight weeks old) and serious breastfeeding
problems [1] led me to spend a lot of time with hospital lactation
consultants on an inpatient and outpatient basis. I am also a research
guinea pig with a university program. Discussions with the researcher
and with my LC about the science and art of breastfeeding have piqued
my interest in studying to become a GP lactation consultant, so here I
am.
Study-wise, I'm back at UWA halfway through a BA, double majoring in
Linguistics and Anthropolgy, with particular interest in medical
anthropology, Deafness and signed languages, and contemporary folklore.
I'm looking forward to learning from the wealth of experience here.
Lara
[1] Don't be concerned - I've read the guidelines, and I'm not here to
solve my own problems. We're comfortable with exclusively pumping at
the moment.
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