Joyce your comments about the housekeeping staff are very interesting.  It came to my attention via my partner at the hospital where we work  (she is Spanish / English speaking) that the housekeepers at work (most of whom are also Spanish/ English speaking) are learning heaps from what they overhear us saying to our patients as they pop into the rooms to replenish supplies and clean up. They often get into conversations with the spanish speaking patients themselves and they repeat our advice about letting the infant stay at the breast for as long as they need,  telling the moms that their only job in the hospital is to nurse the baby -- we do all the rest we bring you meals and clean linen and empty the garbage.  I suspect that these women now know more about bf than some of the nurses who take care of the patients because the nurses are not usually in the room with us when we are with their patients.  For some of our spanish only patients - who cannot chat to the nurses but who
 often chat to the housekeepers, that is a powerful reinforcement to our teaching.

Cathy Loughman RN IBCLC

Date:    Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:29:26 -0400
From:    "Coleman, Joyce" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: girl breastfeeding doll

This was one of the posters that I used for a WBW display.  I almost
had
to take it down (along with the Ad Campaign's two ice-cream scoops
poster--
looked too much like breasts).  Anyway, I had an overwhelming response
from the housekeeping staff as far as breastfeeding trivia and the
display.  The housekeepers gathered around and tried their hand at the
questions in order to win lollipops.  One man kept getting everything
wrong (no children), but he said, "Teach me.  I want to learn."  He is
now
breastfeeding "savvy" and got into a heated discussion with a friend
when
he told them that you can't spoil babies by holding them.  He argued
his
point by stating that he had been trained by an expert :o)  Another
housekeeper came back to me on a couple other occasions to ask about
breastfeeding and childcare.

Anyway, when I took the display down, another group of housekeepers
came
to me one-by-one and asked about the picture of the girl breastfeeding
her
doll.  They told me that they had been trying to figure out what it
meant--
this had been a topic of discussion for two weeks.  It was amazing to
see
the interest that they took in learning about breastfeeding.  We never
know who we're going to impact.

Joyce Coleman, RN, IBCLC





---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html