A holistic approach to building resilience in your lactation career

Transcript

Are you a lactation care provider who's feeling a little burned out, overwhelmed, or kind of stuck in your lactation career?

Well, I'm here to help.

Welcome in to Evolve Lactation.

I'm Christine, and this is where current and aspiring lactation care providers find the inspiration, resources, and connection they need to thrive in their lactation practice.

Evolve Lactation is an organization which has pulled together and is constantly growing a set of resources for you.

Mindset shifts, clinical care insights, information about how we teach others about lactation and breastfeeding.

All of these things combine to help you grow and

expand your professional development in your lactation career.

One of the things that I've thought about a lot lately is how we're seeing people become very overwhelmed in their lactation careers, because there really is a lot to do.

and it's a hard job and that can be hard for people outside of what we do to understand and you know understandably everyone feels that their job is difficult right every profession feels like they have a very nuanced complicated difficult job that other people don't understand well and we're no different.

We just understand the nuance of what it is that we do.

And we understand how demoralizing this work can sometimes be, though it's also extremely rewarding in so many ways.

It's very easy to find ourselves feeling isolated or feeling like the resources that we need are not out there.

And I'm here to tell you that they are.

I want to encourage you because I've had the opportunity and the privilege in my career to meet so many people and to have exposure to so many organizations and groups that are putting together amazing resources.

I've also learned a lot myself about how to teach and how to put together information that's useful and helpful for you.

So as I come across things as time goes on, I add these things and I want to make them available to you.

For instance, things like links to continuing education that's coming up and new handouts or downloads that are free and available to everyone, whether I've created them or someone else has created them.

I love to share those things because I know how much of an impact that can have.

and I'll take you back for just a second to when I started in the lactation field.

We didn't have really the internet as we have it now.

We were basically connected mostly with the people that we knew in real life, and that could be somewhat limiting.

And the amount of information that's out there today, although of course sometimes we are, you know, frustrated because our clients and patients are exposed to so much information that we know is not correct, or maybe outdated.

We also know that they do come across things that are wonderful and that are extremely helpful and supportive.

And it's the same thing for us.

There's great information out there, and there's more than you think.

So I'm here to make sure that you have access to those things through the things that I do on social media, through video content like this, and in every way that I possibly can.

So I really do believe that there is a way to build resilience as we expand and improve on our professional development in this field.

It's easy to feel like professional development for lactation care providers is just about continuing education and recertification, but there's a lot more to it.

And in my opinion, the things we need to really focus on are

Number one, prioritizing our own physical and emotional health so that we can be strong and healthy to do the work that we do.

Number two, writing out and constantly reassessing our practice philosophy, which is more than just our mission and vision.

And I have a lot more resources to come on that.

Number three, uncovering our own biases so that we can work with them and understand where they lie.

Number four, being intentional in the continuing education that we choose.

And number five, nurturing our connections so that we can continue to build community as we grow and begin to really thrive in our lactation careers.

So stick with me, there's lots more to come.

If this really spoke to you, I would love for you to join my community over on Instagram where you can find more ideas, mindset shifts, and links that will help you thrive and become a more resilient lactation care provider.

On Instagram, I am @IBCLCinCA.

You can also email me my email is here on the slide it's christine@ evolvelactation.org.

I also write on Substack so there's lots of ways to find me, lots of ways to get in touch, and I hope that you will!

See you soon.