I commend Bonnie Jones for attending the seminar at UNM where Wolf and Glass
presented, and for purchasing their book (which is the most insightful book
on oral-motor function I have ever read.)  Bonnie, I urge you not to feel
intimidated by the book.  It isn't too heavy for you, and doesn't need to be
digested all at once.  If you set yourself the task of reading short
sections and just thinking about them you will be SO AHEAD of the game.  I
jump all around in that book.  If I have a child with respiratory distress,
I use the index to get to that section and just read up.  Sometimes heavy
reading goes better if it is immediately applicable to a problem you are
dealing with.

I have heard both Wolf and Glass and Marjorie Palmer criticized for not
knowing much about breastfeeding.  It would be great if they did, but that
is not their specialty.  Their information is so easily applicable to what
WE know about breastfeeding that we don't need them to know about our
specialty.  And sad to say, I submit that they know more about bfg. than
most of us know about oral-motor function, and I have to tell you, we're the
ones with the problem on that score.

I came home from seeing Wolf and Glass and Palmer and just felt awful.  I
wanted to go back and re-do 12 years of priv. practice, because I realized I
had been blind to some central issues.  I feel absolutely positive at this
point that the only babies who WON'T breastfeed are babies who CAN'T
breastfeed.  They don't have nipple confusion, they are impaired.  How they
are impaired, whether we can alter that, how long it's likely to take, and
what we need to do to feed them humanely in the interim is the basis of my
practice today.  I fervently hope that lactation consultant training
programs of the future will incorporate course work on this information.

Barbara

Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd., IBCLC
Private Practice, Austin Texas
Visit the "LactNews-On-Line" Web Page
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