I'd like to formally welcome Karleen Gribble as a Lactnet listmother
..our first from Australia.  On behalf of the volunteer administration
team that runs Lactnet, we really appreciate Karleen's efforts so far,
and her willingness to help us make this list as good as it can be.  We
are now over 3000 subscribers large..and we are in the process of
revamping the Lactnet welcome note to make it more user friendly,
clearer, etc.

Karleen is mother to  2 children.  Dale is 9.5 and  daughter Xiaoling
has just turned 5.  Karleen writes "Dale got me interested in
breastfeeding after I gave birth to him one year into my PhD. The PhD
was in plant physiology (undergrad in Rural Science) but plants seemed
oh so boring compared to breastfeeding. Anyway, I finished the PhD and
started working on breastfeeding research. I have an honorary position
(adjunct research fellow) in a the School of Nursing, Family and
Community Health at the University of Western Sydney Uni....Xiaoling was
adopted nearly 2 years ago from China at 3y 4m of age. She started
breastfeeding after a few months and really developed my interest in how
breastfeeding can assist children who have been hurt in their healing."
Karleen home schools her children.

Her main projects at the moment are a study that is "collecting the
experiences of women who have attempted to breastfeed adopted children 4
months or older at placement (working on this with Darillyn Starr) and
just about to start a study looking at sustained breastfeeding and
interviewing mothers and children currently breastfeeding (2 years or
older). It's the first time I'm aware of that someone will be listening
to the views of the actual breastfeeders. ..also am writing up case
studies and doing work for Australian Breastfeeding Association (I'm an
ABA community educator) and generally acting as a contact person for
anyone who wants to breastfeed an older adopted child. .."

Karleen lives just north of Sydney. My husband is an Ambulance officer
and works on his days off landscaping as well as working on the house we
are building (have a 27 acre bush block up the road).  In her  spare
time she is  trying to learn Chinese. Her family is going to China next
year to reconnect with people from Xiaoling's orphanage and to do some
travel. She hopes to go and live there for a year or two in a few years.
"We really want Ling to have some proficiency in Chinese so that she is
not completely cut off from her homeland and so if things change in
China in the future she might have some chance of attempting to locate
her birth family."

And that's a little about Karleen, and aren't we fortunate to have her.
May we all welcome her loudly and with great joy?

Warmly, Kathleen : )

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