Heather's posts have brought up a lot of interesting feelings.  I have been
supporting women in birth and breastfeeding for over 22 years.  I come to
this work from a human potential movement  background and am still a La Leche
League leader (on reserve.)  What attracted me to working with these women
and their families was the opportunity to work with people at a profoundly
transformative moment in their lives.  The thing I love even more about
working with breastfeeding families is that the baby is my partner, calling
for the very best from her/his parents, often teaching them what "the very
best" is.   I consider myself a technically very skilled lactation
consultant.  But I know that I am lazy, burnt out or protecting myself when I
"fix" the problem without deeply hearing the history of my clients, teasing
out the places that make them uncomfortable, helping them discover and
validating their best instincts and facilitating their growth.  Those, and
many other ways I try to make our encounter therapeutic, are things that are
more important to me than breastmilk or breastfeeding.  Happily, most of my
clients wind up breastfeeding, too.  I feel the most bored and disinterested
in my work when I fail to take in the totality of the people I work with and
narrowly define "my job" as being getting this baby to breastfeed or
establishing a milk supply.  That seems a tiny little goal and not all that
my work is about.  PS I rent and sell breast pumps.

Chonyi Glassman, IBCLC
Chestnut Ridge, NY USA (north of NY City)

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