Introduction - Crawford, Canada

[Guest guest]

Hello,

I am so pleased to have found this email group and learn from the experiences of so many of you. This is my chance to introduce myself as so many of you have already done.

My name is Crawford and I live in Edmonton, Canada. If you are in the United States just imagine a location about 7 hours drive north of Montana. I live with my husband and children ages 10 and 15, both of whom claim that they could handle breastfeeding telephone calls by themselves, having heard me give the same support so many times over on the phone.

I became an IBCLC this year after having been a LLLL for many years. With League I have been a group leader, a district advisor, a communication skills development facilitator (League has a GREAT set of 3 classes on how to effectively communicate for people who help breastfeeding moms), sat in many different seats on our Area Council as well as organized Health Care Professional Seminars, presented at area conferences etc. It was a big thrill for me to be one of the winners the Canadian Breastfeeding Foundation Scholarship in 2008. http://www.ilca.org/membership/eGlobe/sept08news1.php I will continue to work with League and am thinking of also starting a private practise. In our city of a million people I do not know of any IBCLCs in private practice.

My interests are in a few areas, adoptive nursing is fascinating for me and I have been involved with a number of moms who have chosen this path. I spent many years in Canada's arctic (Nunavut) and would love to be involved in supporting breastfeeding in northern Canada. I would also like to become involved in workplace support for lactation. I think companies who offer this support offer something so important to their employees and the benefits are repaid many fold. I would like to help make it easy for corporations to do that. However my main interest and passion is that I feel that when I can provide support for mothers to breastfeed as long as suits their family (get rid of pre-mature weaning) that i have helped that mom and that family get a great start on the rest of the challenges that are going to come their way as a family.

I look forward to continuing to learn from everyone here.

Crawford, BA, LLLL, CLE, IBCLC