Hi everyone, I've been involved with LLL for almost 13 years and have been a Leader for over three years. I have recently come to the decision that I would like to pursue a career in lactation consulting and will be taking a lactation educator course soon as a start. I am a M-----a rental station and had a visit from my rep the other day. We got to talking about Lactnet and I mentioned that I noticed that there seemed to be quite a few LCs who were on staff at hospitals, at least in the eastern US. In my area (the north San Francisco bay area in California) we do not have many LCs either on staff at local hospitals (only one LC at Kaiser, none at the other two in the area) or in private practice (none at all in private practice that I know of). I thought maybe we were behind the times but she felt that hospitals in California were getting away from having LCs on staff and that these type of trends seem to start in California and then progress to the east. Is this a growing field only in certain areas? We used to have a private practice LC that many of the moms in my LLL Group saw but she said she didn't have enough clients to stay in business. As a Leader, I miss having an LC to refer cases to and I know other Leaders here feel the same. Maybe it was just poor business management on her part, I really don't know. I honestly would love to have a career as an LC but also need to face the reality that I need to do something that will make some money. My husband has been holding down two jobs for the last 13 years while I've been home with the children and it's been very hard on him. With my youngest starting school in the fall, I would have a little time to further my education as a start. Would anyone care to share their thoughts on this? TIA, Kim Balzer, LLLL, in Sebastopol, CA.