BF Peer supporters in hospital

[Cosmogirl]

Hi there,

I am looking into the option of peer supporting in hospital. So far have done so at support groups. Did the LLL training. Just wondered if anyone else had experience and could let me know what to expect? Also I have a 2 year old and am at home full-time so could only do evenings or weekends. Does anyone know whether this would be acceptable? Thanks for any info.

You'd have to ask your PCT this. I've heard it can be awesome if the midwives really take you on so to speak, or there can be turf war type goings on and misinformation difficult to battle against as it is often from experienced HPs.

I'm sure evenings or weekends would be fine incidentally - babies don't come 9-5 and things can go wrong evenings and nights - hence why they don't like sending you home at night apparently...

Yes agree with pp to talk to your pct. I'm an NHS trained peer supporter and attend support groups too.

Once we've been doing it a while, there is the opportunity to go in to the hospital and help out. We'll have to do some workshops first about health and safety and manual handling etc and of course, another CRB check.

I'd also be interested to know of people's experiences who are already supporting in a hospital too. I've started a general thread for peer supporters too so you could always come and join in over there- the more the merrier.

I'm just starting in a hospital as a peer supporter, I trained with BfN. I want to do ante-natal classes eventually but I got the impression from the PCT that they would like me to pay my dues as it were in the hospital first.

Thank you for the replies. I have managed to speak to PCT about 40 mins away (local hospital is midwife-led so doesn't do many births). The IFC sounded very interested and wants to meet so hopefully will be able to find out some more.

Our local support groups aren't that well attended and I really want to get some more experience with BF support and as lots of feeding problems start in hospital I think it would be great to be able to help out.

Mrsgordonfreeman - that's great. Congrats! Let us know how you get on. Would be v interested to know what it's like.