Jennifer posts about whether a hospital-based IBCLC should make it her practice to introduce herself to all the mothers on a maternity ward, not just the ones who are breastfeeding.  
If your role is exclusively as an IBCLC I think you could make a case for simply being available for all the mothers, and the hospital should ensure that everyone giving birth there knows that there is a person whose time is dedicated entirely to breastfeeding support and guidance.  I think if I were a new mother who had decided not to breastfeed, for whatever reason, I would wonder what the lactation person was doing in my room if she just came in, especially if she revealed to me that she would never help me acquire the skills I needed to be able to feed my baby artfiicially with the least possible risk from contaminated or improperly prepared feeds.
I agree, breast binding should be relegated to the scrap heap by now, but I don't agree that a lactation consultant should never show a mother how to make up a feed.  Because we generally work with breastfeeding problems, rather than normal happy and well-functioning breastfeeding, there are bound to be many occasions in which a mother needs to know how to give artificial milk feeds, and who is better equipped to teach her than the staff person who knows the most about infant feeding?  For example,who else is going to tell her that the rapid speed of milk delivery with most feeding bottles is anything but beneficial?
Baby-Friendly hospitals do not conduct group teaching of how to prepare artificial feeds, which is apparently something that is done in some places otherwise, as part of routine teaching, which keeps bottle feeding in the realm of 'normal' or 'expected', rather than in the realm of 'exceptional circumstances, to be avoided if at all possible'.  But a woman who is not breastfeeding, or not breastfeeding exclusively, needs to know how to keep her even more vulnerable baby as safe as she can while using artificial baby milk.  Unless there is someone else on staff whose time is dedicated to following up the mothers who aren't breastfeeding, it seems to me it's the LC's domain.

Rachel Myr
Krisitiansand, Norway

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