Tag Archives | Clinical Skills

ILCA Conference Speaker Highlight: Linda Smith

During the weeks leading up to the 2013 ILCA Conference, we have been highlighting a number of conference speakers.  As we wrap up this feature, we’re eagerly anticipating the start of our 2013 Conference!

We are so pleased to have Linda Smith as one of the speakers at our conference in Melbourne in just a few short days!

linda_smithLinda J. Smith, MPH, FACCE, IBCLC, FILCA is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, author, and internationally-known consultant on breastfeeding and birthing issues. Linda is ILCA’s liaison to the World Health Organization’s Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative and consultant to INFACT Canada/IBFAN North America.  As a former La Leche League Leader and Lamaze-certified Childbirth Educator, she provided education and support to diverse families over 35 years in 9 cities in the USA and Canada. Linda has worked in a 3-hospital system in Texas, a public health agency in Virginia, and served as Breastfeeding coordinator for the Ohio Department of Health. Linda was a founder of IBLCE, founder and past board member of ILCA, and is a delegate to the United States Breastfeeding Committee from the American Breastfeeding Institute. Linda earned her Masters Degree in Public Health through the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University in 2011. She owns the Bright Future Lactation Resource Center, whose mission is “Supporting the People who Support Breastfeeding” with lactation education programs, consulting services, and educational resources.

On Friday, July 26th, at 10:15am, Linda will be presenting a plenary session at this year’s conference entitled “Impact of Birth Practices on Breastfeeding: 2013 Update”. This vital session will help us to understand how lactation is tied to what happens during a family’s birth.

In addition, she will be presenting three additional sessions, sharing from her wealth of knowledge and experience. Plan now to attend the following sessions:

Clinical Best Practice Workshop on Thursday, July 25

  • 1:00pm: Physics and Forces: When Counseling Skills, Better Positioning and Latch, and the Usual Tricks are Not Enough
  • 3:30pm: Sabotage by Another Name: Policies, Practices, and Attitudes that Keep Mothers and Babies Apart

Concurrent Session on Saturday, July 27

  • 4:15pm: Perinatal Lyme Disease: What we know and what we don’t know

For more information about our upcoming conference and to register, please visit the Conference Page on our website.

3

Playing Sherlock

Written by Diana Cassar-Uhl

When we begin our encounter with a mother, whether it’s before she’s discharged from the hospital, on a home visit during the first week, or after she’s struggled to find comfort and confidence in breastfeeding, our assessment of her situation starts with her report:

“My nipples are so painful.”

“My baby’s weight gain isn’t good enough and I don’t want to use formula.”

“There are shooting pains running through my breast. Is it serious?”

“Can I text you a picture of my baby’s last poop? I don’t know if it’s normal.”

We get as much of a history as the situation permits, and the diagnostician inside of us gets to work. We assess the foundational things – positioning, latch, breastfeeding management. Are feeds on demand or on a schedule? Is there a pacifier in the picture? Are mother and baby comfortable? Sometimes, these answers are enough to get the dyad on their way to breastfeeding success for the weeks, months, or years they hoped to accomplish.

Benedict Cumberbatch during filming of Sherlock.
Photo by bellaphon via Flickr Creative Commons

Other times, our detective skills are necessary. The preliminary suggestions brought little or no relief, and it’s up to us to help the mother solve the whodunnit mystery that spurred her to seek our help in the first place. Like any good detective, we have our eyes open for clues (if the “Blues Clues” theme music is playing in your head, that’s a good sign you’ve been a mother or a grandmother in the United States sometime in the last 15 years or so). When we assess mother and baby as a dyad, many clues are revealed. Why does this work? There is no breastfeeding without both a baby and a mother. The dyad is interdependent, a single entity. Baby needs mother, but mother also needs baby. It follows, then, that when something is amiss in one part of the system, we’ll get to the bottom of the problem faster if we look at the whole mother-baby system. Baby’s tongue is firmly attached to the bottom of their mouth? Aha! No wonder this mother’s nipples are destroyed! Breasts are spraying like Old Faithful at every feeding? Gotcha! The cause of those green, mucousy bowel movements!

Often, after I’ve taken out my magnifying glass and started dusting for fingerprints, I realize my culprit was sitting at the dining room table, holding the candlesticks, all along … baby with sluggish weight gain AND mother with repeated plugged milk ducts? Why didn’t I ask first about breastfeeding management before I started wondering about whether the baby had problems absorbing nutrients? Why was I so quick to send the mother researching about lecithin instead of looking at the more obvious causes of her plugs?

Assessing both the mother and the baby will help us get to the root causes of breastfeeding problems much more quickly, and often more completely, than evaluating each separately might permit. When we keep in mind that we are facilitating the establishment, maintenance, and growth of a holistic, two-part system, solving the breastfeeding whodunnits becomes … elementary, my dear.

Diana Cassar-Uhl, IBCLC and La Leche League Leader, enjoys writing to share breastfeeding information with mothers and those who support them.  In addition to her frequent contributions to La Leche League International’s publication Breastfeeding Today, Diana blogs about normalizing breastfeeding in American culture at http://DianaIBCLC.com and has been a guest blogger at Best for Babes and The Leaky Boob.  Diana can be found lecturing at breastfeeding education events around the United States.  She is pursuing a Master of Public Health, and upon graduation hopes to work in public service as an advisor to policymakers in maternal/child health and nutrition.  Mother to three breastfed children, Diana recently retired after serving as a clarinetist on active military (Army) duty in the West Point Band since 1995.

4

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes

Translate »
Privacy Policy