I have just wrote such a lengthy reply and just lost it just before I posted it, how annoying so this will probably be a bit blunt, as I haven't got time to go into detail all over again!
I take great offence in you saying that if I have only done a 3-day course at Unicef I am not allowed to call myself a bf counsellor( sorry this is one word, I have always had a mental block on how to spell it, even though I use it lots, and its my job - its really frustrating!) as you said in one reply "I am not a professional but a volunteer" so does this mean you have had no training as such? as in the next reply you say " I am a Nct bf counsellor" So how come you are allowed to call yourself but I am not????
My training is as follows I am a qualified nursery nurse, Nurse, and did the 3-day Unicef breastfeeding course, which is one of the most respected in the country.
I have worked a as a maternity nurse for 9 years , this is where I have had huge amounts of experiance and it is here where I have usually found that feeding more regularly than 2 hourly after the age of 3-4 weeks and if the mother has a well established milk supply can be helped, and many mothers if they are honest will say they are allowing their baby to snack when they want, rather than encouraging proper full feeds. I have a very long testimonial record for mothers who when I went to see them they were feeding very regularly as in every 30 mins -1hour thinking thats what they should be doing. However once I had explained to them to look out for other sign for example crying cause they are tired etc and obviously making sure that there are no problems of tongue tie, poor milk supply, over milk supply etc , we could encourage the baby to demand feed 2/3hourly instead. I for one who bf my own daughter til she was 7 months,if I was feeding her every 30 mins -an hour would of welcomed someone to tell me this needn't be the case. So I still stand by the fact that if the baby is over 3-4 weeks old and the mother has a GOOD milk supply 2 hourly feeds should easily be maintainable, and it is quite often mis-guided information why the mother is allowing the baby to snack every 30mins, or poor attachment, milk supply etc could be a reason for it. however it in most cases can be successfully turned around to frequent feeds every 2-3 hours.
To finish my qualifications- I have worked as a nurse on a neonatal ward for 2 years, here I did see the extremes where babies are being encouraged to feed every 30 mins-1hour to help with the mothers milk supply.
I have been practicing as a bf councellor for 2 years now.
I do feel like i have been interogated by you, and will not be posting on here any more, you have made that impossible for me anyway by tarnishing my name. So keep up the good work helping all those mothers out there and lets hope you never word anything wrong. Of course I wouldn't do this in real life, it was one of the very few times I had been on here, and I was just writing facts,and my opinions wrongly not thinking about emotional ,sleep deprived mothers who may have read it, how it was most certainly not meant. I hope to have learnt by this mistake, and think more when I am writing.
If you feel like you need to justify yourself to me , like I did to you, please do not worry, if you want to call yourself a bf counsellor, reading your threads you sound more than capable to do this. Though please do not doubt other professionals. We are all going to have slightly different views depending on our experiances and qualifications and training, certainly doesn't need one to attack another, this most certainly would put the fear of god, into already confused new mothers, who feel they don't know who to trust.