"Does anyone work in a city/town with a relatively large Deaf population? Being hearing impaired myself, I am interested in learning American Sign Language (ASL) and would like to hear about experiences anyone has had helping Deaf women. Alis Fogarty Pasadena, CA" I lived and worked in Fremont, CA. As I was told, it had the largest *percentage* of deaf citizens in the U.S. (Don't know if that is true.) Since it is home to the California School for the Deaf, many deaf families settle there, and have established a large deaf community. It is very common to see people signing everywhere one goes. I did work with a few deaf clients. Many of the dads and other support people were also deaf. The moms had the same breastfeeding problems other moms did, but often received far less help in the hospital. A few moms told me they felt ignored and invisible; if they were able to have a hearing translator with them, the staff spoke to the translators instead of to the moms. A complaint I heard a few times was the focus on "audible swallowing". I stressed watching the jaw excursion instead. Another issue was having almost every healthcare staff they came into contact with clapping hands next to the baby and pronouncing the baby's hearing as fine (it doesn't work that way.) The issue of surgery is often a sensitive one, and not usually a topic to bring up at a breastfeeding consult. The major hurdle I had to overcome was using the special operator who would go between my client's TTY and me speaking to them. Breastfeeding terms were usually new to the operators; it made for very lengthy phone consults/follow-ups. Good luck, Marita Nickison, RN, IBCLC *********************************************** 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(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html