Well I am going to bite the bullet on this one.. I just got hired 16 hours
a week as the Lactation Support Specialist at the hospital where I have
been volunteering and I am neither IBCLC or RN!! Everyone with whom I work
is aware of this, and aware that I shall be sitting the exam in 1999. Why
did they hire me? Not to teach the cleft palate babies to breastfeed, but
to set up peer counseling programs; breastfeeding classes for pregnant
women, new moms, and moms-with-older-babies; lactation support for NICU
moms; accurate breastfeeding data bases, etc. I already obtained a
nice-size grant for the NICU to increase BF and kangaroo care.
I am very grateful to the hospital powers-that-be who seem to recognize my
organizational skills and are prepared to wait a bit on my
15-yrs.-of-practical-training ones.
Let's face it, a lot of breastfeeding education is very basic and when a
hospital doesn't even have a breastfeeding class, we need to start with the
basics...
Anne Merewood