What is a lactation consultant?

The who’s who of breastfeeding support.

“X said my baby’s latch­ing well but Y said it needs some adjustment”

“The doc­tor at the post birth check said my baby was fine but the help­er at the breast­feed­ing drop in said he had a tongue tie”

“The mid­wife said nipple shields reduce milk sup­ply and the breast­feed­ing spe­cial­ist said I should use them.”

Con­flict­ing inform­a­tion, its what most par­ents report is one of the most frus­trat­ing aspects of seek­ing breast­feed­ing help. In the early days when you just want someone to tell you what to do to make it work, it can be par­tic­u­larly confusing.

There’s lots of reas­ons breast­feed­ing advice may dif­fer from per­son to per­son and day to day

• The age of your baby- advice that would be com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate on day 1, may be help­ful on day 7
• Your baby’s health- if your baby has lost a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of weight or has been dia­gnosed with an under­ly­ing health con­di­tion, feed­ing advice may change.
• Their per­cep­tion of how you are doing.- when someone is wor­ried that you seem unwell or stressed they may change their advice to make things work bet­ter for you.
• The know­ledge and exper­i­ence of the per­son giv­ing the advice

It’s the last one I want to talk about today.

Lots of people can give breast­feed­ing advice and sup­port. Some mid­wives are also lacta­tion con­sult­ants, and some peer sup­port­ers have a level of know­ledge far above the usu­al. They all come from dif­fer­ent per­son­al back­grounds, with dif­fer­ent levels of skills and train­ing. So they all bring dif­fer­ent things to the table.

So here’s a very broad who’s who of breast­feed­ing support.

Types of lactation consultant

Healthcare staff

Doc­tors, mid­wives, health vis­it­ors. You’re likely to see a lot of them in preg­nancy and the days, weeks and months post birth and they’re likely to give you lots of hints, tips and ideas about feed­ing. What’s their back­ground? It var­ies a lot.

Doc­tors – includ­ing pae­di­at­ric doc­tors – get very little train­ing on infant feed­ing. They are great at dia­gnos­ing and treat­ing med­ic­al issues and they are def­in­itely who you want to see if your baby has for example lost a lot of weight or has any signs of ill­ness. If a feed­ing plan is needed because your baby is unwell, this should usu­ally be agreed between a doc­tor who has respons­ib­il­ity for med­ic­al safety and a feed­ing spe­cial­ist who can provide expert know­ledge on infant feeding.

Health vis­it­ors and mid­wives do get spe­cial­ist train­ing on infant feed­ing. If they work in a hos­pit­al or area that is work­ing towards Baby Friendly, their train­ing will be updated every year. They can usu­ally help with all the basic issues you may encounter like get­ting the baby on the breast prop­erly, determ­in­ing if the baby is get­ting enough milk, man­aging sore nipples, engorge­ment or mast­it­is. Some­times there will be a spe­cial­ist mid­wife or health vis­it­or team they can refer you onto if your issues are more complex.

Peer supporter

Peer sup­port­ers are par­ents who have breast­fed their own baby for some time and received addi­tion­al train­ing to sup­port oth­er par­ents. You’ll often encounter them in breast­feed­ing groups. In some areas they can vis­it you at home. They are trained to help you with all the basic issues you may encounter and often have more time to spend than health­care staff and can often also sign­post you to loc­al groups and resources.

Breastfeeding counsellor

These are par­ents who have breast­fed their own chil­dren and decided to go onto fur­ther train­ing over and above peer sup­port to provide more extens­ive breast­feed­ing sup­port. They will have trained with one of the nation­al breast­feed­ing sup­port charities:

• Nation­al Child­birth trust (NCT)
• La Leche League (LLL)
• Asso­ci­ation of Breast­feed­ing moth­ers (ABM)
• Breast­feed­ing Net­work (BFN)

…and go by vari­ous names depend­ing on which char­ity they trained under. Some will work privately as well as with the char­ity. They can provide sup­port with basic and com­plex breast­feed­ing issues and bring their own exper­i­ence of breast­feed­ing as well. The philo­sophy of how they provide sup­port var­ies depend­ing on the char­ity they trained with.

Specialised lactation consultant

Lacta­tion con­sult­ant is not a pro­tec­ted title and can mean any­thing at all. Some people offer­ing sup­port as lacta­tion con­sult­ants will be breast­feed­ing coun­sel­lors, some will be health pro­fes­sion­als who have a spe­cial­ist interest in breast­feed­ing, some will be child­care pro­fes­sion­als who have taken a spe­cial­ist interest in breastfeeding.

…and then some will be an Inter­na­tion­al Board Cer­ti­fied Lacta­tion Con­sult­ant (IBCLC)

IBCLC is con­sidered the gold stand­ard in breast­feed­ing train­ing, although many Breast­feed­ing coun­sel­lor courses cov­er sim­il­ar mater­i­al at a sim­il­ar level. IBCLC’s may or may not have breast­fed chil­dren of their own and may or may not be health pro­fes­sion­als. How­ever, they will have extens­ive doc­u­mented exper­i­ence of provid­ing breast­feed­ing sup­port and take a six hour exam on lacta­tion to qual­i­fy. They als have to recer­ti­fy every 5 years show­ing that they have up to date know­ledge. So an Inter­na­tion­al Board Cer­ti­fied Lacta­tion Con­sult­ant is well qual­i­fied to sup­port you with any aspect of breastfeeding.

Do you need breast­feed­ing sup­port from a qual­i­fied lacta­tion consultant?

Get in touch today!