I agree with Susan that no IBCLC should be able to get all her hours from one course.  We are more art than we are science, and no one art teacher can appreciate and teach it all.  Heck, there are way too many *disagreements* for us to go into the field thinking that what Our Teacher said is the way it really is.

I was at the Philadelphia LC in Private Practice workshop last year and this year, and played an enlightening game with myself.  It's a small conference, and we sit so we can see one another.  I thought, "Okay, a room full of LCs.  Which 5 would *I* pick for myself as a new mother?"

The answer surprised me.  I didn't pick the older ones - the ones who've written the books, spoken at a gazillion conferences, the ones who know everything.  Because I didn't want to be someone's 4,000th mom.  And I didn't pick the young giddy ones who didn't seem to have a very deep bag of tricks yet.  I went for someone somewhat older than my theoretical self.  She wasn't fabulously or fashionably dressed, because *I'm* not, and I wanted her to look as if she cared more for other people than for appearances.  She had to have humor in her face but mostly empathy and fire.  What was I looking for most of all?  Not someone who had all the answers, but *someone who wouldn't let go of me until she did* (unless of course I wanted to let go sooner).  Someone who knew enough people and enough resources to *find* me the right answers, who'd want to help me not because she was getting paid but because she wanted me to be successful, who'd refuse to have a bottom to her bag of tricks.  Not a newbie or an oldie but a middlie.  I picked people I'd never met before that conference, along with a couple that I already knew.  

Part two of the game was just as fascinating.  I told the woman next to me about it - someone completely different from me in age, stage, and geography.  She picked something like 4 of the same 5 LCs!  Then I told someone I would have said was *like* me in all the above.  Hers were completely different.  

Next year I'm going to ask those same women if we agree on the fundamental: that we want someone who may not have all the answers but who knows where and how to get them quickly, and someone who won't let go of us no matter what, until we're ready to let go ourselves.  Ha!  Teach *that* in 5 days!

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com 

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