I'm sitting here pondering how I ended up in the lactation world and thought I'd share with you all my journey (well my begining more than journey since I'm still a newbie). In Spring 2006, I was sitting in my Maternal and Child Health graduate class and the lecture for the day was breastfeeding. I honestly don't recall ever thinking about breastfeeding prior to that point. I finished undergrad and moved to the big city to continue with graduate school, because I just LOVED college and wasn't ready to let go. One week into grad school and I quickly realized I NO LONGER loved school. I was working full-time, going to school full time in the evenings, and trying to keep a long distance relationship going. I was studying Public Health, which I really enjoyed, but I was trying to find my "niche". I had an on-going list going in my planner with ideas and interests. On that day I added "Breastfeeding Counselor", the last item to be added to the list. But why? Why did one lecture effect me so much? It wasn't the fact that breastfeeding is perfect nutrition. Most of us agree that human breastmilk is the optimal food for human babies. It was this statistic that hit home with me: 99% of women can breastfeed, but 80% experience problems. I was shocked. Doesn't breastfeeding just come natural to everyone? I immediately couldn't learn enough about this field. Whether this statistic is correct anymore or not doesn't matter, because once again I think most of us would agree that breastfeeding can be tough! For someone who loves maternal and child health this is the perfect problem to tackle. That's what this is all about for me - it's not to shove information you already know down your neck, it's to say it can be hard at times and if you decide to breastfeed there are people out there to help you.
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