Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Breast Conversion
Tonight I give a preview of my breastfeeding presentation to the local lactation consultant group. I look forward to finally visiting their meeting, even more so to give my presentation and get feedback. Our local LCs are the foot soldiers. They labor tirelessly often stretched between hospitals. I hope to gather feedback from them about what LCs have to offer in a WIC office setting. This is one of my suggestions for WIC in my presentation- that they have an LC in every office. I also suggest that WIC offices be converted to breastfeeding clinics. I'm sure that suggestion will go over like a ton of bricks. Then I suggest that they delay offering formula vouchers until six weeks postnatal. That should have them booing me off the stage and throwing tomatoes. Its very difficult to convert someone from bottle-think to breast-think. I'm hoping an evening of hanging out with LCs will be refreshing for my soul and good preparation for next week.
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I know you have to leave room for the few "lack of thriving" infants out there that will absolutely need formula. However, I do think people just get what they can from WIC no matter what. I recall in the Seattle area, we were on WIC, and we'd tell them the items we didn't need. Others would get the cheese or whatever, and give it away even though they didn't use it themselves. I think that's how people see the system, it's there, you should take it. Having a Lactation consultant would be good. I did read or hear that you can get breast pumps from WIC, but then I'm not sure how true this is because when using WIC, I was never told of this option. Breastfeeding posters in the WIC offices would be good too...showing BFing in a healthy way. Really, it would save the state money of women breast fed so WIC should do what it can to reduce the amount of formula by encouraging breast feeding. I wonder if there can be an incentive program whereby if a woman is breastfeeding and doesn't use formula vouchers, she can get some produce vouchers for fruits and veggies. I know they give some for carrots and extra milk and cheese for mom...things like that.
Dawn
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