My next adventure

I’m going back to school!  Sometime in the middle of March I will begin the steps towards becoming a Board Certified Lactation Consultant.  And I am super excited.

When The Peach was about 4 months old I was working closely with a Lactation Consultant to help me resolve the issues that the baby girl was having with nursing.  During that time, a little seed was planted.  A few months later I found myself thinking about how much that gal had helped me and how great I would be at that job.  I started doing some research to find out where I would even begin.  As it turns out, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Since I am not in the health care field (I’m not a nurse) I will have to jump through several hoops to reach my goal.  First, I will need 90 hours of education in Human Lactation and Breastfeeding.  In March, I will start the first of two courses to cover this requirement.  I also need to make sure I have taken several prerequisites that are required.  Things like Biology, Sociology, Anatomy, etc.  Most of these classes I have covered in my undergraduate years, so that is nice.  The most challenging requirement is 500 mentored clinical hours.  At first I thought this would be simple!  I could just find a Lactation Consultant in a hospital that would agree to mentor me, and I could just start adding up the hours!  It isn’t that simple.  I guess hospitals don’t just let anyone off the street come in and start clinical rotations.  Since that option seemed tricky, I looked for a Lactation Consultant in private practice.  I found one that was willing to mentor me for $20 an hour.  Sorry, I just don’t have $10,000 laying around in my piggy bank.  Yikes!  There had to be another option.

One of the best bits of advice I received was to join the Central Arizona Lactation Consultants Association and start networking.  While I was at those meetings, I found out that the Nursing College at Arizona State University was creating a program for people just like me to become Lactation Consultants.  BINGO!  For the past few months, I have been hounding the Nursing College for information regarding this upcoming program.  I discovered that they would be offering a course to cover the required 90 hours of breastfeeding education.  But what about the 500 clinical hours?  I contacted the program director with my many questions and she suggested we meet in person.

Our meeting went great and I am all registered for the upcoming course.  What is even more exciting is that they want to offer a mentored experience for people that are in the same situation as I am.  But they haven’t done this before.  The good news is they are excited about ME because now they have a guinea pig.  I don’t mind being in such a position because it earns me a tuition break!  I will be working with them to develop this mentored experience and I am certain that it will be great since it directly affects me. 

I have quite some time to jump through all of my hoops.  The earliest I can sit for the Board Exam is in July of 2013.  Anyway, I am thrilled to be going back to school to learn something that really interests me.  I have loved nursing all of my babies and I am so glad that it all worked out for us.  I am really looking forward to helping nursing mothers succeed!