Rose Tully

[Guest guest]

Not sure if you are all aware of how poorly my dear friend and mentor, Rose Tully is doing here in NC in her dual with pancreatic cancer. Overfield has kept us posted on Caringbridge.com but it has been nothing but terrible news over the last 24 hours. Despite the grim statistics of this disease, we all had high hopes and plans because, well, because Rose is Rose and there is none other as brilliant, as loving, as giving, as resilient, and as resourceful as she is. I have been through many difficult and many joyous times with her and she is our go-to resource whenever a lactation situation is stumping any of us to go any further. She gives me gifts in every interaction I have with her and coached me along the way to becoming an IBCLC as well as through the long and difficult process of nursing my twins. would come by my house each evening on her way home from long, tedious days as director of lactation in the hospital. She would come with case of donor milk in hand and then the mashing of my breasts and the coaxing of my babies, would begin. We would cry together at the irony and unfairness of me, the old LLL leader, the newly certified IBCLC, the mother of 4 previous breastfed children, being unable to produce enough milk and get my twins breastfeeding. I would force her to share a secret with me so that I could blackmail her if she ever divulged my weeks of breastfeeding failure to the world! We would laugh and cry. In the end, my twins went on to breastfeed for the next 4 years! Thank you Rose for that and all the gifts in my heart! How precious this woman is ... how can this be happening? So, here I sit -- a puddle, mulling all this over when the phone rings and it is of course, yet another weeping mother struggling to breastfeed her baby. I am in no mood and cannot focus on her lament, but yes, Rose, I will see her in a little while and help her and her baby, well because, that is what YOU would do. Tenderly, Ann

Ann Conlon-, IBCLCTriangle Lactation Consultants1875 Carrington Drive, Raleigh, NC 27615 www.trianglelactation.comBest breastfeeding site http://www.bestforbabes.org/