well, cathy bargar already knows i like and respect her a great deal, i say
as i prepare to disagree with most of what she said. i do NOT think that
breastfeeding is the sole province of women. i do not think that lactation
consulting is merely a "background" profession that should only work directly
with mothers and attempt to educate other professionals to be the bearers of
the knowledge. there are a lot of people who "know" about lactation already,
but don't know enough, and that includes people with the same initials as me.

this is a specialty, and it oughta be for good reason. if i have cancer, i
don't want someone who took a brief course in cancer to be my oncologist. i
want someone who knows everything. if a mother has a serious enough problem
to be beyond the scope of a LLLLeader or other lay counselor or "interested
professional:" (and by this i mean what hospitals euphemistically call
"lactation nurses" or "lactation specialists") then she needs a specialist.
and as long as "interested professionals" or even those with the correct
initials, continue to ruin breastfeeding often beyond recall, when mothers
are in their care, i would say that that is argument enough indeed to support
our profession remaining that.

a lot of the information handed out by grandmothers, midwives and wise women
is wrong, just like the type of information that was handed out "in the old
days" for treatment of other medical problems. what cathy means, i think, is
that if everyone breastfeeds then the number of serious problems requiring
professional help would be greatly reduced. i hope so too. but the problems
would never be completely eliminated.

feminism doesn't mean exclusion of men, in my book. if we are going to
exclude men from "the breastfeeding community," then, i might just find
myself taking sides with the members of this community that have names like
jack, frank, tom, rob, etc.

carol brussel IBCLC
laura nevada lactation
denver colorado

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