As a graduate of the International Breastfeeding Institute’s Certified Breastfeeding Counselor program, you’re likely ready to jump into providing lactation support. If you complete the program in 2020, you’re likely wondering how you’ll get your practice up and running. If you haven’t yet considered it, providing virtual lactation support is likely the answer.
Many of us, our partners, our children, even our parents are becoming quite tech savvy due to Covid-19 safety concerns. With everyone working from home, schooling from home and more, it makes providing virtual lactation support the ideal move during a less than ideal time.
Whether you’ve been a breastfeeding counselor for just a few days or many years, these top FAQs will help you provide top notch virtual lactation support:
What Is Virtual Lactation Support?
As a certified breastfeeding counselor, you’re trained to provide education, breastfeeding initiation support and troubleshooting with common breastfeeding challenges. While there’s a warmth in in-person care, providing virtual lactation support can still be wonderfully supportive.
With the ability to use video chatting, text messaging, emails and phone calls, there are many ways for you to meet your clients’ needs. With the popularity of video chat, you can offer similar in-person warmth to virtual lactation support.
While many areas have covid-19 restrictions still in place, this allows you to continue to offer services regardless of local mandates. In fact, it’s a great service to offer even outside 2020 style pandemics for a few reasons:
- Reduce exposure to newborns during peak cold/flu and RSV season
- Allows you to help more moms without extra traveling
- Some mother baby pairs need just a short session to answer common problems allowing you to set an affordable fee for short visits as you needn’t commute
- Some families prefer to maintain privacy in the home but still need support
- A great option for follow up after prenatal consults or in-person lactation support
Can You Really Help Moms Via Virtual Lactation Support?
In short, absolutely! Many mother baby pairs simply need answers to common questions about breastfeeding initiation. Perhaps they need support navigating conflicting advice from a nurse, their mother and a book they’ve read.
Some mother baby pairs are understandably tired, overwhelmed and not quite sure where to start. You can provide reassurance about common things, such as a newborn needing to practice latching. During a virtual lactation visit you can help educate parents about supply and demand and what to look for with diaper output to know baby is getting enough.
Many mothers have questions following discharge or baby’s first well visit. As a new parent, it can be confusing to know whether things are going well or not. You can also walk them through different position and how to check and feel for a good latch.
Most importantly, if you notice a concern, especially via video chat, you can provide them with a proper referral. Many mother baby pairs go weeks between visits with their midwife, doctor or pediatrician. If you notice any concerns about your scope, you’re able to easily refer them. This reduces the likelihood of a mother with less support not reaching her breastfeeding goals due to undiagnosed issues. While a certified breastfeeding counselor cannot diagnose anything, they can recommend seeing a qualified healthcare provider.
Throughout your breastfeeding counselor training you learn when to refer and what’s within your scope of practice. Breastfeeding counselors are excellent steps in the maternity support system and great at catching breastfeeding issues before they become even harder to manage.
Is Virtual Lactation Support A Sustainable Business Model?
In short, it definitely can be. With many of us becoming used to working from home, learning from home, etc., our society has become comfortable with virtual work.
Even top medical specialists offer telehealth as a way to continue to offer care without increasing germ exposure. In fact, even as some areas have relaxed precautions and guidelines, telehealth remains a popular option for providers and patients alike.
As a breastfeeding counselor, providing virtual lactation support is a great way to meet the needs of mother baby pairs. Many find it easier to schedule lactation appointments virtually as you aren’t accounting for travel time and you can even work from a unique location. Out of town? No problem, you can simply log in and provide support.
While in-person lactation support will always have benefits, it seems virtual support will have a place in care for many years to come.
What Does Virtual Lactation Support Look Like?
Each virtual session will vary just like each of your in-person sessions. A lot of the role of a breastfeeding counselor is simply evidenced based education and encouragement.
Many breastfeeding counselors provide support from pregnancy through weaning. Your support may vary slightly depending on the stage the mother baby pair are in. Your virtual lactation support might look like:
Prenatal Support
- Educating about how the body changes during pregnancy to prepare for breastfeeding
- Discuss the golden hour, or the immediate post birth period
- Help them understand baby’s belly size at birth and the first few weeks
- Discuss potential pumping needs and scenarios
- Ensure they understand supply and demand, and the benefits of skin-to-skin
Support After Birth
- Breastfeeding initiation support
- Educating about a good latch
- Referring for any weight concerns, tongue tie concerns, reflux concerns, etc.
- Trouble shooting latch, positioning, and other common breastfeeding hurdles
- Providing education and support for moms transitioning from bottle and/or supplementing to breastfeeding
- Answer common question about weaning, introducing solids, normal infant sleep patterns, common feeding questions, and growth spurt concerns
- Educate parents about supply and demand and how to maintain supply
- Help prepare moms for returning to work, pumping, PACED bottle feeding and milk storage
- Provide encouragement and support to help moms reach their personal breastfeeding goals
- Encourage moms to find peer breastfeeding support
- Help build a mom’s confidence in latching and breastfeeding in public
- Support a client navigating conflicting advice, sorting through for best practice feeding, and helping her decide what works best for her situation
These are just a few examples of what a certified breastfeeding counselor can do during virtual support. Aside from holding baby and assisting hands on, nearly everything you do in person can be done fairly well virtually.
Offering virtual support is an excellent way to grow your business and provide continued maternity support in your community.