As part of my childbirth educator certification process, I’ve had to attend some hospital classes to fulfill my observation hours. Per the requirements, I sat in on a Breastfeeding class and a Newborn Care Class. Luckily my local hospital has a slew of these classes, and the director had no problem letting me crash two of them. (On a side-note, she couldn’t get her head around the fact that I was certifying as a childbirth educator, and kept insisting that I was a nursing student. I stopped bothering to correct her because it didn’t matter to me what she called me as long as I was able to take the class for free.)
The first up was the Breastfeeding class, and I figured that since it was in a hospital, I’d be doing a lot of face-palming while I was there. In my area, hospitals are notoriously misinformed about breastfeeding, and it’s not uncommon to find the L&D nurses, OBs, and pediatricians who give moms terrible breastfeeding advice. Booby-Traps Galore. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine just delivered and the on-call pediatrician told her that the newborn baby should sleep 6 hours and that she probably needed to formula feed for the first few days. Thankfully her sister-in-law called me early in the morning and got a name of a good lactation consultant so we could try to undo the damage that Ped had just done.
But to my surprise and delight, the hospital I was taking this class at actually has a pretty strong lactation support program, and employs 5 full time IBCLC’s who are there 7 days a week. They also run a free weekly breastfeeding support group for moms who’ve delivered at that hospital, which is pretty great. The instructor actually told the moms that there might be a lot of misinformation about breastfeeding floating around on the L&D floor, but they could always have an LC paged who could help them with whatever nursing struggles, and I was happy to hear that.
However, the class was not without its face-palm moments. For starters, the IBCLC began her introduction to the class by saying “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not like those La Leche League people.” Face-palm. And then she went on to say “And you should only use the lanolin we give you – don’t use any of that “Angel Mama Baby-whatever-they-call-it… who knows WHAT they put in that stuff!” Face-palm some more.
I knew it wasn’t my place to say anything in this class, so I politely listened while she made those uninformed comments, and tried really hard to enjoy the good, evidence-based, pro-mother, pro-baby, pro-breastfeeding information she was giving out. There was far more of the latter than the former, so I walked away from the class without too many bruises on my forehead.
Then came the baby-care class. Different instructor – same hospital. Here’s where I’ll tell you that between those two instructors, they had 8 children – and not a single vaginal birth. 8 cesareans. Ladies & Gentlemen, this is the world we now live in.
The second instructor had also formula-fed her three children. She discussed breastfeeding as in “Yeah, that’s the best thing to do, but now I’m going to address you as though you’re all going to formula-feed your babies.” She also said “Oh, any nurse on the floor can help you breastfeed – you don’t need to call the Lactation Consultant.” And again, I sat idly by, listening, face-palming, but doing what I came there to do, which was observe.
Then she said something that was so factually inaccurate that I nearly leapt out of my seat. When discussing babywash, she pointed out to the class that she was sending them all home with a sample of Johnson & Johnson’s baby wash because, as she said, that was the “best stuff on the market.” Okay, that’s not the part that made me leap - it was what came next.
She then brought up CosmeticsDatabase.com – the place where you can type in the name of just about any shampoo, lotion, or other bodycare product and find out exactly how toxic it is. So here is where cognitive dissonance is causing me a mild headache. I’m trying to reconcile how exactly she thinks that Johnson & Johnson is the “best on the market” when she clearly knows about CosmeticsDatabase, which rates it as one of THE MOST TOXIC. Then, I get my answer.
Next she tells the class “Yes, just type in the name of the product you’re looking for, and it will tell you how toxic it is – 0 is the most toxic, and 10 is the least toxic.”
I swear, I truly think that a little piece of my brain exploded. Her statement to the class was 100% factually inaccurate. This is not my opinion, or my interpretation, or my bias — it is a matter of absolutely fact that her statement was false. On CosmeticsDatabase.com, 0 is the LEAST toxic, and 10 is the MOST toxic.
Try to imagine my whole face flushing, my heart starts racing, knowing that I cannot raise my hand, interrupt her, and correct her. In any other class, I would have done exactly that. But in this class it was absolutely not my place. So my mind swirled for 10 minutes trying to come up with what I could do to set her straight. Finally, she called a break, and I decided that I was going to take her aside and ask her if I had heard her incorrectly.
So I did just that. I said “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you – did you say that 0 was the worst rating on CosmeticsDatabase?” to which she replied “Yep, that’s right!” And I just – in my most welcoming, professional, and polite voice said “No, actually, it’s the opposite.”
Here’s where I’m thinking she’s going to deck me, but she didn’t. She gasped and recoiled and said “What?? It is?!” and then I launched into everything I knew about that website and their safety ratings, and how Johnson & Johnson had broken my son into hives. She responded by saying that her director had given all the instructors at the hospital the information about CosmeticsDatabase, so they were all giving out the wrong information, without ever having looked at the site to see for themselves.
Then, very luckily, I also remembered that their sister hospital is one of the few hospitals in the entire country to actually use Earth Mama Angel Baby products INSTEAD of the toxic stuff. So I brought that up and said “Yes, and guess what! Your Sister Hospital B uses EMAB, and this is why…” She was fascinated, and then seemed deeply disturbed that her hospital wasn’t doing the same as Hospital B. She started recounting tales of her own children breaking out in rashes, and wondered if that Johnson’s stuff may have been the cause. Then she wrote down the Earth Mama Angel Baby website, and said that she’d talk to the director to see if they could get Hospital B to send over some of their Earth Mama Angel Baby stock.
I thanked her for her time, and walked away feeling like I had made a real difference. The universe put me in that class to stop the flow of that bad information. It may be a teeny-tiny, possibly insignificant moment, but I know that it changed what those students heard that day because when the class came back, she corrected herself to them.
I’ve been meaning to tell this story for a few weeks, but then tonight I saw an awesome post by The Marketing Mama detailing how she was able to get a mall to change their restroom sign to something less problematic for nursing mothers. That post made me realize that so many of us really want to make a difference, and we do hold that power if we only just speak up a little. It may be a small thing to some people, but changing a symbol on a sign, or correcting the information being given out in a baby care class, does go a long way to shifting attitudes.
Next time you’re wondering whether your voice can make a difference, just remember this:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead.
Think of me as I make the first biggest choice of my life. I am to go into the hospital tonight to be induced. My midwife is going to do a catheter. It is technically called a Cervical occluding double balloon catheter. No drugs. I am so nervous. I never ask for people to think of me, but I was hoping…I could get a few happy thoughts. I have a doula, she is wonderful. And I love my midwife. Thank you for all you do Gina, you inspire me, I feel like I can do this because I have strong women to look up to.
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