Hi Naomi, Interesting question (do breastfeeding classes actually help?). I teach a breastfeeding class which is 3 hours (spread over two evenings) of a 14 -hour childbirth class. It doesn't actually make the "sponsoring institution" any money at all, as the whole shebang is free to parents, while the hospital pays the nurses & me our wages and buys the materials. I've had varying success depending on how good a job I managed to do (I've been doing this every 8 weeks or so for two years now, and it goes up and down). However, I've often had interested, interesting questions and felt I could clarify some real misconceptions that were floating around, or just satisfy people's curiosity. Most of the ones who attend childbirth class do plan to breastfeed at least for a while, but some don't. Generally I feel I established a good rapport with the parents and left them understanding what a big topic this is, and I think I transfer some of my sense it is also a very important topic. But no, I have no evidence that it increases breastfeeding rates. I do feel sure that a quiz on basic breastfeeding knowledge would easily separate my parents from those who hadn't attended. I find that when I go to help first-time moms who were in class, I get to start a lot farther down the road --they might not remember how to do a football hold or how often to nurse the baby, but they've been exposed to it before, and they "latch on" a lot quicker than the first-time moms it's all new to. And no mother here has ever asked to "see the LC" sight unseen -- if a mom I've never seen, in class or prenatally, is in trouble, it's the nurses who call me in. If it's someone I had in class or saw at the clinic ahead of time, the nurse says "she was asking for you". This I feel is a good thing. So...all anecdotal! I think it would be tough to generalize about "breastfeeding classes" overall. As we've seen, the quality of teaching varies *a lot*. And so much depends on that. Elise At 08:36 AM 6/29/2004, you wrote: >It's been fascinating reading people's accounts of breastfeeding >classes. Here's my quesion: Is there any evidence that breastfeeding >classes have any benefits? Do they increase bf initiation, duration, >exclusive bf? They make money for the sponsoring institution, but does >anyone know of any research about any other benefits? >Naomi Bar-Yam *********************************************** 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(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html