What is an International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant?
An International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) is an additional certification for someone who is qualified to support and inform breastfeeding families and can also offer their expertise with other healthcare staff with both basic and complex feeding challenges.
Here at our Trust, we have two specially trained IBC Lactation Consultants, with one based at our Women’s Hospital and one based at our Children’s Hospital.
Leanne Cruickshanks, Maternity Infant Feeding Lead Midwife, is based at our Women’s Hospital, and is a specially trained IBLIC.
Leanne, who has been a midwife for 22 years, is now the Infant Feeding Lead Midwife for Maternity at our Women’s Hospital.
She said “There are three infant teams across BWC who support infant feeding in well and unwell babies, term and preterm babies and provide support for all infant feeding journeys.
“We provide staff training and education across Maternity, NICU and Birmingham Children’s Hospital and work as a larger collaborative team to improve patient experiences and care around their feeding journeys.
“Every baby needs to be fed, so infant feeding is a huge part of the role of those who work in maternity departments. The IBCLC qualification has given me extensive knowledge to accompany my experience, and I feel privileged to have gained this specialist knowledge.
“I am always aiming to provide the best possible care to all who I support, educate and work alongside. Education is a way of empowering those I support and work with to fully support or make an informed choice around infant feeding.”
Rebecca Clague is our second Certified Lactation Consultant, who is based at our Children’s Hospital.
Rebecca added: “I have been certified for 5 years and working as an infant feeding lead for the last three years.
“I work at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, providing feeding and expressing advice for any baby and infant up to two years of age.
“Some children have never had the opportunity to feed orally and need help establishing this, and other have had an interruption in their feeding journey due to illness and need our help to get restarted.
“I love working with all our mothers and babies on both sites and within the infant feeding team, it’s a true passion of mine to see all mothers have the advice and help they need to feed their babies.”