tiktok / someone else with NCT knowledge please can you help??

[StealthPolarBear]

What would you expect from an 8 week NCT peer supporter course?
What kind of content, and roughly how weighted (how long for each bit)?
Currently MNing while restarting the router every 5 seconds so might not be back for a while but I will be back and will read and appreciate answers.

I thought the role was to help women with 'normal' breastfeeding issues? so "does my latch look ok?" might br answered with "you might be more comfortable if you brought the baby closer to your body", type of thing. Or talking to a woman nervous about feeding in public.
Also, the emphasis is on listening & allowing women to make up their own minds, so what would we do say, if a woman calls saying her newborn is feeding every 2 hours, her sister has said she should give formula as babyis obviously starving and her milk's not enough, she'd like to continue but really feels she should give formula?
Surely she needs to know this is normal, healthy, good for supply, pretty good for a 2 week old and is likely to get better? So much emphasis has been placed on not giving advice at all that i'm not even sure how I'd go about it! I'd have been less unsure before i started this course tbh.

sorry, just to clarify, i am certain that listening is theright thing to do and that it;s the woman's right to make up her own mind. But do you really need to refer to MW/HV every time she encounters a 'normal' bf problem (e.g. growth spurt) and is sure that formula or early weaning is the answer?

SPB, it should become clearer to you as the course goes on. You can share information with the mother eg about normal feeding. That's not giving advice...

maybe I'm not cut out for this then? tsc, are you saying the right thing to do in the scenario I mention is to refer?

Information giving is completely different to advice giving - hopefully you'll have a better understanding of that as your course continues.

WRT the scenario you give, the point is that you need to be aware of your limitations. You'll only have had a few weeks training. I'm sure you're cut out for being a fantastic PS, but PSs do not have the length and depth of training as a BFC in bfing or of a HCP in other baby matters.

So if you are listening a lot to your mum, and you're tentatively offering information that she clearly doesn't have yet (ie. it can be normal for a baby to feed frequently in the early weeks so long as they're latching on well - wet and dirty nappies being a good sign, as well as weight), you may find she comes to her own conclusions. Maybe through talking she'll find the 'space' to say 'well, my nipples are quite sore, but that's just normal isn't it?'. I can't tell you how often sore nipples are left out of the equation in conversations I have with a mother - I would never find it out if I didn't listen to the mother for a long time before offering suggestions.

This is getting too in-depth for a MN thread - please talk to your trainer about your concerns. She will want to know how you're all feeling about the course, and what she can do to make you all feel more confident in your understanding of your role of a PS.

Maybe you'll train as a BFC next?

SPB, I think you are over thinking this abit though I understand your concern about not having more info up front about the course. as a peer supporter, if a woman is concerned about something that is normal like growth spurt and is being misinformed by rellies, you don't need to refer, you simply inform her that it is normal. and possibly give a short reason why and what to expect. It is an opportunity for relationship building so she feels like she can come back to you when she is nervous about something else.

You can't make her accept your information of course but you just have to be an ear and be ready to provide evidenced based info in lay woman's terms.

Another one can be sleep issues and breastfeeding. We can normalise breastfeeding by just having a baby ourselves who has gone through what they are experiencing and letting them know that they will both be fine and better for it. You can suggest ways to help with night wakings for example. Most people in your area I am sure have no breastfeeding friends to turn to hence the need for peer supporters.

With the ABM you are always supposed to refer women when suspecting something is going wrong with bfing (thrush, latch, other feeding issues brought on by things like prematurity etc.). The ABM insurance does not cover Mother Supporters to 'fix' issues. (And the P&A was not detailed enough to do so.) But because I have information about these things, I am more able to identify them for a mother and tell her who to turn in my local area for assistance. Support may be something like, giving her the BFN link / page on breast thrush and going to her GP with it in hand.

having recently seen a BFN volunteer i thought i would tell you my experience as it was fantastic and for me, it was ALL about the listening

she was fabulous - she didn't really given me any advice (other than you may want to try x, or y) and she checked DD's latch and reassured me it was ok

she watched me feed, she reassured me and she gave me space to talk

i felt much more confident in her "advice" because she had been there and done it - my HV's suggestion for DD's multiple night wakings was to consider early weaning

So, I think what i am trying to say is, don't under estimate how good it is to talk to someone who has actually walked a mile in your shoes!

SPB, in that instance, advice would be to say

"I don't think you should start him on bottles. Breastfed babies do feed a lot, it's normal at this stage. It will probably get better in the next few weeks - it won't be like this forever."

But information would be:

"Well at this stage if you were to give formula, he probably would sleep a bit longer, but you need to know that if you do, it could make breastfeeding more difficult. If you want to continue with breastfeeding, remember that it will get easier, and it won't be like this forever."

Oh, just scrolled up and saw you were talking about early weaning rather than a newborn, I think it does still illustrate the difference though. (What I have put may not be factually correct, obviously the info you give would be)

• basically, it's fine to say why giving formula (etc) might be a bad choice, and/or to offer alternative choices or sources of help they may not have thought of but it's not ok to explicitly tell them to carry on breastfeeding, or not to give formula.

Maybe it's a terminology thing then. I wouldn't ever give directive advice unless I was in a position to and it was my job iyswim (even before the course) but to me "have you tried...?" "have you considered...?" "if you do that then you need to know..." is all advice and the kind of advice I would give.

I am also amazed that it is seen as such a bad thing to have someone who's done it check your latch when you just want a bit of reassurance, as in the scenario I mentioned. Think I need more role play and also shadowing another PS - that's a really good idea. I did suggest asking one of the women who'd done the PS course last time to come and talk to us about her experiences but that wasn't really responded to.

on the way to work I also thought taht since symptoms of thrush and P&A can mimic each other, it would be important to also have a mum speak to a bfc as well as her GP - and tell her why. admittedly, I have never been in this position but I find that as long as you are willing to keep learning, you only get better.

The profile that BT outlined of her course covers just about everything the ABM MS course did at the time I did it.

I also find that besides speaking to new mothers, being a MS has given me to confidence to speak about bfing in a non threatening way to young women and men I come into contact with. The nursery where my dds go had me as the first expressing mum. The nursery nurses and children have seen me nursing a toddler and they ask all sorts of questions which I have been able to discuss in an informative way with them. I got a lot of, for them, embarrassing questions and they really listened when I give answers and have been made very aware of what normal breastfeeding is all about.

I have given a childcare student loads of links on bfing for a module of her course she is doing.

As I teach, I have discussed breastfeeding in my MFL lesson. The lesson plans that week was all about healthy eating and lifestyles anyway. I teach all boys and one asked why they needed to know about breastfeeding so I told them it was because one day they will be supporting their partners in feeding choices.

I've even had my midwife ask me about why breastfeed a toddler so i was able to print off a couple links I have shared in the past on MN and give them to her.

Checking latch is tricky, though, too. If a mother says she is not having pain, and the nipple is a good shape at the end of the feed, I feel reasonably confident to say 'that looks good to me'. But if there are more concerns, I do advise them to see someone more knowledgeable, just to be safe.

I'd agree with BB's examples of information vs advice. Advice assumes that I know what you should do, just do what I say, and it will all be fine. Information assumes that I don't know everything about you and your baby, you need to do what works for you.

I'd classify your examples as information. Yes, they are ways of saying 'I think you ought to try X' but they are gentler, and respectful of the mother's autonomy and boundaries.

foxytocin, are you assuming that a GP would be good on thrush? or on P+A? Because, certainly from what I hear on here, lots of GPs don't believe in thrush. And I don't think P+A are their specialities, either. Some GPs are knowledgeable on breastfeeding, sure, but many aren't.

NQC, so in fact the sort of 'advice' I had in mind is fine?

Oh, no, I'm not an expert on thrush or any of this. If I think it might be thrush, or tongue tie, or anything else 'medical', I would ask other more experienced supporters to check, and find out what the best plan forward is.

I believe the BFCs in my area can refer patients for a tongue tie snip, so some of these things do get fixed by BFCs.

SPB, I would describe those statements as information, I think. I quite like 'what would it be like if you ...' as a gentle way to suggest things, too. Obviously, though, those statements could be said in a way that made them more advice and less information, iyswim ... I think realising and accepting, underneath, that you don't know what this mother should do, because you aren't her, is the most important bit, tbh.

Also, the BFCs who know more than me, know which HVs or GPs are sympathetic and knowledgeable on BFing, so will, I think, know how to go about getting proper suitable medical advice, iyswim.

The training clears up a lot of that, I would hope. The PS stuff just really qualifies you to either work on the ward (which is full of mw anyway) or to help out at a group or a health clinic. There is always a mw/hv/full bfc around.

thesecondcoming - sometimes women who have encountered poor and conflicting help with bf feel quite angry and evangelical about making sure the same thing doesn't happen to others. A good trainer will give them space to express this and work through it, so they are not on a 'mission' - the training session is a safe place to vent and rant, but it should not be taken 'out' into the encounters with women.

I agree - it's very off-putting when people have an agenda like this.

gosh no. i don't expect the gp to know anything about thrush or p&a which is why I'd give a mum the info on thrush to take with her when seeing him. I'd also let her know that i think it is a good idea to speak with a bfc as well as it could be p&a or thrush.

my gp i discovered over time is v bf friendly so i mention him to mums who I speak to. he admits he knows v little bfing.

The difference is that if you say "If you top up, you need to know it can affect supply" you are presenting it more as a choice - the key word is "if" rather than "do/dont" as in "Don't top up, because it can affect your supply" even though both sentences are giving the same information. HTH - I think it is a terminology thing definitely!