Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune - August 7, 2005
Emily Stone
That societal premise-far from accepted by Hollywood or teenage boys-is at the root of the lactation consultants' goals. "Mothers have a lot of barriers to breast-feeding," Carothers said. "A lactation consultant is here to reduce barriers."
Carothers would like to see more businesses provide a discreet place for working mothers to pump breast milk; greater acceptance of nursing in public areas, such as malls; and family and friends of breast-feeding mothers lending more support.
About 70 percent of American women initiate breast-feeding, and 36 percent continue after six months, according to figures disclosed at a seminar. Likeliest to breast-feed are older, better-educated, affluent married women, and women who are typically confident and persistent. Least apt to nurse: teen moms, low-income women, those with babies in neonatal intensive care and minority women.
Most of the ILCA's members are either hospital and public health nurses or nurses in private practice. The seminars they attended ran from the straightforward "Public Policy: Another Look at Breast-feeding and HIV/AIDS," to the highly technical "Investigation of the Sucking Dynamics of the Breast-feeding Term Infant: Ultrasound and Intraoral Vacuum Research."
There was also a display of devices to facilitate breast-feeding, many dreamed up by new parents. Like a hands-free pumping bra, created by a woman frustrated with sitting idle while pumping. And a storage rack with trim bottles designed by a father tired of the refrigerator being stuffed with shoeboxes of his wife's breast milk in plastic bags. Necessity, remember, is the mother of invention.
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