Hi Amy. I hope you are not being too freaked out at the unhappiness of
folks on the list at your CLE program being called certification.
Here's how I explain it when the friends and others I counsel (I'm a lay bf
autodidact) ask why they should bother paying an IBCLC $125 an hour when
they've got me for free.
I tell them to compare lactation knowledge to literacy. The average
experienced breastfeeding mother knows enough to take care of her own needs.
Say, she reads bf at a fourth grade level. I've been studying and
worrying this topic for a lot longer, and have looked at more people's
stories, over say four years; I figure I'm around the eighth grade level.
Probably your CLE's are around there, too. That's a lot of literacy.
We could read Shakespeare; we can write a persuasive essay; we are literate.
I bet your CLE's can use that knowledge to help a lot of people, especially
with comparatively routine calls, and especially if they are well aware of
what they *don't* know, when it is time to refer.
But an IBCLC has the equivalent of a 4-year college degree in English
literature. It's not just that she or he knows more facts; she's also
experienced those facts more widely, knows the range of literature -- in this
case, the range both of research on a wide variety of lactation topics and
also the wide variety of mothers experiences, from healthy newborns to NICU
babies to Downs kids to three year olds to moms with heart conditions to
primary lactation failure to etc etc etc.
I am saying this as someone who has decided NOT to become IBCLC, because
honestly as a lay counselor, with another career on the side (not to mention
3 young children) I am not about to invest the HUGE amount of time and energy
that would be required to attain the level that is a MINIMUM before I would
be eligible to sit the exam and become certified. It's a big deal, truly.
We need more people at every level of lactation knowledge in the world. But
we don't want to be confusing the eighth graders, like me and your CLEs --
who can read, and appreciate, shakespeare, who know a lot, who are
enthusiastic, who are hugely important and to be praised -- with the
professors of literature, who are just at a completely different level of
breadth and depth. And that is what happens when certifications are blur
together, which is why your IBCLCs are bumming.
Elisheva Urbas
broadening the lactation literacy level in NYC
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