Breastfeeding courses - too much theory and not enough practice?
22 November 2009
Are breastfeeding courses providing too much theory and not enough practice when it comes to teaching breastfeeding counsellors the skills that they will need to give effective breastfeeding help and advice?
I raise this question following a conversation I had recently with an NCT teacher. Jane (not her real name) has taught ante-natal classes for several years but is keen to qualify as a breastfeeding counsellor so she can offer more support to her mums if they are experiencing breastfeeding problems. Jane told me that she had paid over £300 to attend a three day breastfeeding course, at which she had learnt a lot about the theory of breastfeeding but little about the practical side of things. At no stage during the three days were either a mother or a baby present, so all the practical skills were demonstrated using props; the students were shown how to hand-express milk using a balloon!
The trouble with using a balloon as opposed to a real mother is twofold: the two lactation consultants running the course could not demonstrate that their techniques worked nor were they able to check that the students had learnt to do it properly.
Shortly after attending this course, Jane went to visit one of her mums who was suffering from very engorged and painful breasts, which neither her baby nor her breast pump was able to empty – resulting in a hungry baby and a distressed mother. Unfortunately Jane discovered that she couldn’t help either as her newly acquired knowledge on hand-expressing didn’t work. Jane asked me to come round and she watched as I got the milk flowing using a combination of hand expressing and an electric pump – both involving a very different technique to the one she had been taught!
Of course, I do appreciate that it would be difficult to find mothers willing to be used as guinea pigs on these breastfeeding courses and I also recognise that these courses do provide a lot of good information – but in my opinion this is not enough. And it's not fair on individuals like Jane who now regrets spending so much money to attend a course that hasn't taught her any practical skills.