I was so jealous of all you people who were able to attend the ILCA
conference a little while ago. But now I have more or less made up for
missing this by being at 4 days of conference (2 x 2 day conferences) in
Melbourne, Australia. They were great. We were privileged to have Miriam
Labbok and Andrew Whitelaw (who is really a Scot, but is working in Norway)
to contribute to both conferences, as well as many inspiring and very
interesting Australian and NZ speakers. They were all wonderful. The first
conference was aimed at educating GP's (what Americans would call Family
Physicians) and any other health professionals about breastfeeding. The
second concentrated on the use of breastmilk in special care nurseries &
NICUs and included milk banking, which so far does not exist in Australia.
This is a particular interest of mine, so I found this conference great.
Both conferences were professionally taped, so if anyone would like to hear
any of the presentations, they can get them. You are welcome to e-mail me
privately for more details if you like.

It was also great to meet face to face with some other Aussie Lactnetters,
Jackie Cesnik, Anne Bovey and Robyn Noble.

Fiona Coombes also went to Melbourne and she and I had tentatively planned
to wear our Lactnet t-shirts at the first conference, but in the end
chickened out! However, not to be totally outdone, I stuck mine up on a
display board, alongside NMAA's Lactation Resource Centre posters (thanks,
LRC staff for allowing me to do this - I'm not sure if they are on line
yet, but are hoping to be soon) with the instructions for joining Lactnet
on the back of the shirt showing. I had several enquiries and expressions
of interest, so we may well see a few more Aussies joining us soon.

Now all I have to do is catch up on Lactnet, and prepare for all the talks
I have been booked for to share what I learned in Melbourne! The first one
of these is tomorrow!!

Joy Anderson,
Perth, Western Australia