Breastfeeding Counsellor Training: 2 Months In

I am currently studying to become a breastfeeding counsellor for the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA). I am thoroughly enjoying the course materials and the people I've met and am working with to get this qualification. I'm enjoying it so much that I'm flying through the workload (it's a far cry from my old PhD days, I tell you!).

What Is A Breastfeeding Counsellor

The ABA website states:

"Breastfeeding counsellors are all trained volunteers. All have breastfed at least one baby for at least nine months and undertaken the ABA breastfeeding counsellor training course to qualify. Counsellors provide counselling and breastfeeding information to any person seeking help. Counsellors are continually updating their breastfeeding knowledge and counselling skills.

Counsellors may be contacted by telephone or email. Counselling is also available in person at group meetings...

Please note:

ABA breastfeeding counsellors are all volunteers. Counsellors are not medically trained and so can not give medical advice. Their area of expertise is breastfeeding management."

And as I have written elsewhere on this blog:

"Unfortunately breastfeeding in our society is seen as a feeding choice for mothers, rather than as the norm, that it is, for babies. As such Western women do not necessarily grow up watching their relatives and friends breastfeed, and when their own time comes they may not have access to wise and experienced breastfeeding mothers to support them as they learn. Breastfeeding counsellors are now available to fill this gap."

Workload

Thus far I have completed "Promote and represent the organisation" and have completed the workbooks (but not yet completed the assessments) for "Foster and promote an inclusive learning culture" and "Ensure a healthy and safe learning environment". Each unit has a workbook which is over 50 pages long. It contains reading material and activities for students to complete (but not submit to anyone for assessment). When the workbook is complete students can then do the assessment tasks set for the unit and once their assessment has been graded "competent" they can move on to the next unit.

The ABA has an online web hub where students can join discussions, study groups, meet other trainees and chat to trainers and assessors about their course. For those of us lucky enough to live near one of the ABAs locally based groups there are also training meetings in which trainees work through the workbook activities and discuss the course with their assessors and trainers in person.

The Units I Have Started

"Promote and represent the organisation" involves learning how to apply the ABA's ethics, policies and image to volunteer work, promoting the ABA, fostering relationships and networking and evaluating promotion of the ABA. This is the only unit I have completed so far, and my assessment was returned with a glowing evaluation, so I'm very pleased.

"Ensure a healthy and safe learning environemnt" is the occupational health and safety unit of the course. I was reluctant to do it at first because OHS immediately brings to mind boredom and fuddy-duddiness, but it has had quite an impact on me and my everyday life. I thought I would struggle to remember information from the workbook, but I find it has really stuck with me and I notice OHS issues everywhere now! I've almost completed the assessment taks for this unit and what I have already done on it has been well received by my mentor and assessor.

"Foster and promote an inclusive learning culture" focused on inclusivity and diversity and how they relate to learning. I haven't started the assessment for this unit because it is a group activity, which I will be doing with the other trainees in my group in June. This unit teaches students how to practice inclusivity, promote and respond to diversity, develop techniques for supporting inclusive learning methods, and how to improve work practices. I have found this to be the most interesting unit so far.

I have also started the workbook for "Communicate using technology". This unit ensures all trainees are able to communicate, collaborate and organise using electronic resources. I'm told by a trainee further ahead than me that for someone who uses the internet and computers as often as me, it is quite a simple unit.

For Anyone Interested In Starting This Course

Take a look at the training information the ABA have available on their website here.Get a sense for the association by reading the many subsections of the "About ABA" section of their webpage here.

For Anyone In Need Of A Breastfeeding Counsellor

Please ring the ABA's 24/7 toll free helpline on 1800 MUM 2 MUM (1800 686 2 686).

Free Info Night About Becoming A Birth Servant

Readers in Melbourne (or who are happy to travel to Melbourne) who are interested in becoming a birth servant I've got good news. The International College of Spiritual Midwifery is having a free information night on June 1st about their birth servant course.

June 1
6:30pm
766 Riversdale Road
East Camberwell

You can take a look at what their course includes here.

The next spiritual midwifery course starts in July

For more information email Anna (anna@openingtolife.com.au)

Breastfeeding More Than 1 At A Time

I want to direct readers of this blog to the Mommy News & Views blog where they are hosting a series on tandem nursing this month. Tandem nursing refers to the practice of breastfeeding more than one of your children at the same time. Issues that go hand-in-hand with tandem nursing are; breastfeeding through pregnancy and breastfeeding beyond two years,/breastfeeding toddlers and young children (as opposed to babies).

To read the collection at Mommy News go to:

http://mommynewsblog.com/tag/tandem-nursing/

For more information about tandem nursing you can see the following links:

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/tandem/index.html

http://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/bfinfo/tandem.html

http://www.mothersdirect.com.au/catalogue/id/215/cid/52/parent/0/pid/2/t/catalogue/title/Adventures+in+Tandem+Nursing

"Goats Don't Have Midwives": Bringing Birth Back To Women Seminar

Today I had the pleasure of attending a birth seminar in Melbourne coordinated by Joyous Birth. The experienced and insightful Gloria Lemay was the keynote speaker.

Melbourne based birth servant Julie Bell started the seminar by talking about maternity services and women's experience of birth in Australia. She spoke about "masculine" and "feminine" ways of knowing and the importance of feminine knowledge (instinct) during birth. I found her views about birth and Indigenous Australians particularly interesting. She shared the concept that "when one is not free, no one is free" and went on to say that Indigenous women have been dispossessed from their land, and that for her as a homebirther was heartbreaking. Bell suggested that Australian maternity services will be broken as long as Indigenous birth is broken. In terms of strategies for how to bring birth back to women, Bell stressed the importance of women telling their birth stories.

An unexpected surprise for the day was that the Joyous Birth National Convener attended the seminar and gave an impromptu talk about human rights and bodily integrity. She urged listeners to not be wall flowers at this crucial time. Her most insightful comment, in my opinion, was "birth is but a reflection of our lives."

A mother of three (J) and maternity services consumer gave a moving talk about birth trauma. She opened by talking about the widely held misconception that birth is naturally traumatic and how, as a society, we have been desensitised to violence at birth. She summarised the problem with hospital birth thusly; "hospitals are set up to treat illness thus birth is treated as pathological until proven otherwise, but if you look for something hard enough you will find it".

I found myself nodding along as she defined the purpose of birth as an experience for women to prove their strength and courage.

She shared a collection of women's personal accounts of traumatic births which were hard to hear, one quote in particular struck me; "I feel like I was pack raped with instruments."

J critiqued the response "at least you have a healthy baby", which is often given to women recovering from birth trauma, and observed that "healthy is a term that seems to be applied to anything that is not dead". Another quote that really struck me from her talk was "we're living in a disconnected world and it starts from a disconnected birth."

After lunch Gloria got behind the lectern and shared some of her brilliant birth worker wisdom with the room. She spoke about how she came to be a birth attendant and the joys of serving women at birth, and of homebirthing, and the trials of dealing with an anti-homebirth culture, including legislative and regulative aspects of this in Canada.

One of her many insights was that she notices a persistent yearn in women to go back and give birth all over again, to get it right. She stated that the best birth control there is, therefore, is to ensure women get great birth experiences first time round!

I found her insight about how dangerous government regulation of midwifery can be to be particularly enlightening given that many birth workers in Australia are presently calling for the government to take more responsibility for homebirth regulation and subsidiaries. She noted that there is no such thing as autonomous midwifery in a system where doctors set the rules for midwifery practice and regulate midwifery conduct, and how this ultimately leads to midwives simply becoming a go-between for doctors and women.

It was disheartening to hear of the tactics used in Canada by anti-homebirth agents to stop Gloria's birthwork. I was not surprised to learn that the government had successfully bribed other birth workers to do their leg-work and try to catch Gloria out doing something illegal. It reminded me of what I wrote last month about homebirthers being divided and conquered by the dominant forces in Australia.

My favourite quote from the seminar came when Gloria asked her audience why it is human women can't give birth (or more specifically why human beings believe that human women can't give birth). She said "Goats don't have midwives". I may very well stick a photo of a goat up in my birth space next time! The answer was that language is our worst enemy. She said that without language birth looks like this:

A labouring woman has contractions, she moves through them, she forgets about them when they aren't happening and then the next one comes and the cycle repeats. The problem is that human women have language and so their birth experiences look like this:

Between contractions labouring women are still thinking about the contractions that have passed and how much effort they required and worrying about the contractions that will come in the future, scaring themselves into wondering how much harder it will get (the past and future contractions are represented by the chairs). But if the labouring woman lets go of the past and future and lives in the present moment, she could be enjoying a break between contractions that she can cope with. She stated that "[The Goddess] never gave us a sensation we can't handle, it's the one that's coming up that causes women to want the epidural". She summed it up by saying it is much like a woman holding on to a history of past relationships with men as she moves forward into new relationships, telling herself she's open to something new, but dragging the old expectations and fears along with her, like the chair at Gloria's foot.

Finally something of great importance for all the birth workers present at the seminar was Gloria's warning that we don't want to become part of the problem in maternity services. She talked about responsibility and autonomy and how imperative it is that the birthing women takes both of these things at her birth. She talked about a case where a woman said "I don't know how I got a ceasarean, I paid a doula". There is a danger that some women will fall into the trap of believing that because they hire a midwife or a birth servant, that the birthworker can protect or save her from negative outcomes, or rather take responsibility away from the women. This is not the birthworkers role.

It was a fabulously enlightening day. But most of all it was soul-nourishing to spend a day in a room full of birth-loving, birth-trusting, birth-serving wise women.

ETA 5/6/09: Gloria has since added "The goats have no midwives" saying to her blog. Check it out here.

Here are some photos I took throughout the day:

The hall during Gloria's talk (approaching 2pm)

Me & my daughter meeting Gloria Lemay

One of the display tables at the back of the hall; lumiknits, all that Sazz & the Australian Breastfeeding Association


Me with Julie Bell & Gloria Lemay




Two local film makers working on a documentary about homebirth

Tweet, Tweet

You can now follow Ilithyia Inspired on Twitter. I started the twitter account last year but promptly forgot about it. So to keep up to date with all the birth and breastfeeding related projects Ilithyia Inspired is involved with or supportive of, check out the twitter page:

Birth Trauma is Real

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Ergo Review (soft structured baby carrier)

The ergo baby carrier is a soft structured carrier complete with adjustable straps that can be loosened and tightened while wearing baby with ease. The ergo can be worn for a front carry, back carrier and a hip carry (if you make some adjustments to the straps). It features an adjustable hood that enables children to fall asleep and lean their heads back supported. The ergo also has a pocket on the front where wallets, keys and phones can be stored securely. Unlike wraps and ring slings, the ergo uses plastic clips which many western parents find easier to understand and use on account of social familiarity with clips.

Soft structured carriers are more comfortable for adults and children alike compared to hard structured carriers such as the Baby Bjorn carrier. The ergo is ergonomically designed and distributes the child's weight far more effectively than the Bjorn carrier. Unlike the Bjorn carrier, ergos better support the child's spine, hips and legs, enabling their bottoms to sink lower than their knees, whereas the Baby Bjorn places all the weight on baby's crotch.

The ergo is quick to get on and easier than a wrap in the sense that it has clips and it's structured, when bub is freaking out and is crying too much to give you a few minutes to get the wrap on you can calm her instantly by popping her in an ergo (although a pouch is even quicker). But there is one clip that goes across the top of your back, that is tricky to learn how to fasten at first when wearing the ergo on the front. Initially I did that clip up before I put it on and slip my head and back through the gap between that clip and the straps. I have since learned to keep the strap higher up my back, at the base of my neck and I can reach behind and fasten that clip with ease. This clip is extremely easy to deal with when wearing the ergo on your back.

The ergo is ideal for walking, but you can't really sit in it as with a wrap, pouch or ring sling. It is comfortable, but not snug like a wrap. It took many months for me to warm to my ergo because it is quite bulky compared to a ring sling or wrap, and takes time to soften and mold to your body shape. I found that the straps dug in under my arms uncomfortably, and I still find this when wearing the ergo on my front. However, my partner never encountered this problem.

It is my favourite carrier for carrying my child on my back, perfectly comfortable. I struggled at first to learn how to get my child into the carrier for a back carry, until lying it on the floor, lying my child on top of it and then positioning myself on top of her (not resting my full weight on her of course!) and fastening the clip around my waist in that position, and putting my arms through the straps. This method is fast and effective and gives me a mini abdominal work out in the process.

The ergo is not ideal for newborns, you can get an infant insert with it, which we have, which is a piece of fabric you lay between you and the ergo and then lie your newborn on it. To be honest I am not comfortable with using the infant insert in the ergo when I have snuggly wraps like the ellaroo woven wrap and the hug-a-bub stretchy wrap and our child did not like to be laid down in carriers, she always favoured an upright postion.

The ergo is ideal for long walks with older babies and children on your back. It is the only carrier I find I can move fast in, with ease. When I'm running late for the bus it's the ergo I want to be using!

This carrier comes with an instructional DVD, though we never felt the need to watch ours...structured carriers with clips and buckles are fairly self-explanatory.

*The ergo featured in the photos above is the "cranberry" colour.

The Sling Stations has this to say about soft structured baby carriers:

The Ergo Baby Carrier is easy to use...We find that it is easier to transfer the weight to the hips with a structured carrier. Cons: Not usually recommended for babies who cannot hold their heads up well. Not as versatile or as beautiful (in our opinion) as some of the other carriers. The baby carriers that we sell are comfortable and will last for many years. 4 months to 3 years or more. Dad's favorite.

Ergo Website

Where to Buy:
Mothers Direct
Babes in Arms
Carrying Away
Nature's Child
Sling Station

Other Soft Structured Carriers Available at:
Karri Tree Lane (Yamo)
Karrie Tree Lane (Patapum)