Patricia Young wrote:
"I think we need to think outside of the box to accomodate moms/babies and
what needs to happen to encourage BF.  I don't think a busy pediatric
office with sick kids present is the place to bring newborn babies and VNA
care is not universal for newborns or cost effective.  And universal vss
with LCs isn't really necessary.  LCs are for the mother-babies with
complicated problems.  It isn't cost effective to use them as basic care.
If moms could get accurate, basic care/info in an easy, inexpensive way,
many LC vss would be averted.  The use of hospital walk-in clinics would
make the vss "official", accessible,  possibly guarantee that the info is
reliable-accurate and free up HCPs to work with moms and babies that need
more sophisticated help."

Our peer counselling group contacts new mothers either before delivery or as
soon after as possible, depending on when we get the referral.  Supposedly
all breastfeeding moms discharged from our local hospital are referred to
us.  Also, referrals come from the breastfeeding class parents-to-be take at
the hospital.

Each new mom or repeat mom is assigned a counselor who remains their
counselor for the duration of breastfeeding or until the relationship is no
longer desired by the mom.  We make the phone calls, with a goal of calling
new moms every other day or so in the first week, then maybe weekly for 6
weeks and tapering off to a monthly or so check in once everything is well
established and mom is comfortable nursing.  We make ourselves available to
these moms by telephone and also have a hotline.  We also have monthly
meetings.  I suppose a potential drawback is that we are only trained to do
telephone counselling, but then again we are always able to refer to a LC,
and are trained (hopefully!) to recognize when we can't provide what the mom
needs.

Does anyone else do this type of counselling?  We are all volunteers,
trained by our LCs within our group.

Rhonda Feder
Elkins Park, PA
lawyer and lay counselor

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