We at Lactation Matters would like to congratulate all of the newest IBCLCs who found out that they passed the IBLCE exam last week! What an amazing feat! We would love to hear your story about your journey to become an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC.)
What inspired you to become an IBCLC?
What were the highlights during your journey?
What challenges did you face?
What are you most excited about now that you are an IBCLC?
We would love to collect your stories and share them with our colleagues and blog readers.
If you have a short story that would fit into the comment section of this article, please submit a comment.
If your story belongs as its own blog article, or you have photos and/or videos to share, please submit it/them to lactationmatters@gmail.com and we will contact you in the next few days.
Thank you so much for your connections and interactions on Lactation Matters, thus far. We are ecstatic to hear from you!
Robin Kaplan, M.Ed., IBCLC, Co-Editor Lactation Matters
Owner, San Diego Breastfeeding Center
I knew there was something special about breastfeeding when I had my first babysitting job at 13 and saw the sweet moment between mom and baby. I always knew I wanted have that with my babies. Many years later I had my son and never expected to have breastfeeding difficulties. After a disappointing birth to then not be able to breastfeed made me feel like a huge failure as a mother. Fortunately I delivered at a wonderful hospital with fulltime LC’s on staff. When my son couldn’t be discharged bc he was loosing too much weight they made sure I got to stay too. When I disolved in tears, one of them had dad take baby out of the room, told me to breath and look her in the eyes and said very calmly “you will breastfeed this baby”. That gave me the confidence I needed to keep going. I had been attending local LLL meetings from my last trimester on and felt such support there that when my son was 2 I became a leader. It was great for me to feel like I had an outlet that help me feel productive but not be seperated from my son. 10 years later I’m watching my youngest go off to full day school and wondering “now what?”. I had always heard people say you should follow your passion but always thought my only passion was to be a mom. Then one day I read a book about figuring out what career you would like to to and the author said “what would you do if money wasn’t a factor, what would you do for nothing?” I thought “well, I’ve been helping mom breastfeed their babies for years on a volunteer basis and it does make me feel good.” An idea was born. So I started taking online classes while my kids where at school and just found out last week I am now an IBCLC. I’m not sure what my next step will be but I’m on a road that looks promising.
What an inspiring story, Rachel! What an incredible journey you have had and what experience and compassion you will bring to every mother that you work with. Congratulations and best of luck to you!