Building Excellence in Lactation Care
Finding ways to transform
I’m a member of several Facebook groups designed for aspiring lactation care providers to learn and discuss clinical issues as well as share their training and certification journeys. After all, it’s a complex process, and everyone can use support with that!
As an IBCLC member of those groups, I see my role as primarily a supporter, encourager, and every-once-in-a-while clarifier of lactation information. Usually, if you wait for threads to unfold, not only will good, accurate information appear, but multiple perspectives will surface - things that people should consider when they are trying to grasp a concept. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, really. You can watch people become more and more confident as they are able to teach things to one another - and that’s what we do in lactation care. It’s truly our primary function.
Recently, I saw a thread unfold that made me pause. The original poster shared a screenshot of a text from someone she knew who was telling her what the pediatrician had said to do for her baby. The original poster shared it with what appeared to be the intent to hear from others about how they might choose to respond. It’s a common type of post in these groups: “what do we as lactation care providers do when this happens?”
I watched the thread for a while. Many people responded, and the reaction was going in one direction. No alternatives to the popular response were offered. The thread began to feel ominous to me, but also familiar. Where had I seen it before?
Oh no, I realized. This thread looks like what you see in an unmoderated mom/parent group, where you sometimes see many people responding to a question or situation with defensiveness, anger (usually toward a health care worker or other source of information that has seemed to inflame the group), and, worst of all, responses that bypass the actual question or problem. How can this help anyone?
Here’s the problem: this wasn’t a parent group. This is a group of aspiring lactation care providers. What I could suddenly see clearly was that they didn’t realize that their habits from those parent groups were carrying on into their “professional” group.
In their haste to band together with a common response that attacked the health care worker (not the original poster or the person who sent her the text, but a “safe” villain, familiar to them in the narratives they are accustomed to), they were not looking at the information contained in the post with the eyes and brain of a lactation care provider. They haven’t trained themselves to do that yet.
That’s what I needed to share with them. That’s what they needed. Here’s a bit of what I wrote afterward:
“Just one more thing and then I will leave this alone: here's what I should have said yesterday. I promise you I did not misread or misunderstand the original post. My IBCLC brain read the post and performed its normal, appropriate calculation: there is not enough information to know if this doctor's advice was appropriate or not. I encourage you, as lactation care providers (future or current) to approach these types of posts, stories, anecdotes, etc. with the same exact thought process. Think "What don't I know about this situation?" before jumping to "That's not the right answer." We are required to assess every situation individually. We cannot know the whole story unless we are involved as the parent or the care provider. Your "lactation brain" needs to be trained to respond neutrally while you gather facts. If your "parent brain" remains in control, your reactions will be defensive (on behalf of your client or yourself) and not productive. We can discuss these cases in theory until we are tired of them in groups like this, but we also must remember that there are people in these groups who have been in that parent's exact shoes and they will read our comments and possibly even begin to doubt themselves. If they start seeing "that dr is so wrong" and "that parent should just follow their gut" they may wonder if they did the "right" thing in their own situation.”
This was a post that essentially asked the question “What do we do as lactation care providers when this happens?” The responses I saw to the question demonstrated what not to do. I feel so fortunate that I had the opportunity to contribute to the conversation in a way that was truly meant to guide these committed and dedicated people toward a path of providing lactation care that is effective, intentional, and respectful of all who are involved in a situation. My goal, as always, is to help people transform their passion and knowledge into a lactation career that is fulfilling while building longevity and resilience into their everyday practice. Thanks for reading!