Public Health Doula, IBCLC!

Thursday night I got a text from one of my LC classmates that the IBCLC exam results were already up. I was standing in a suburban CVS, on a late-night pantyhose-and-makeup run to prep for a wedding. I grabbed my friend's iPhone and started trying to both find the results website and find where I'd e-mailed myself the code to see my results (while babbling "They weren't supposed to be up till tomorrow! Why are they already up! I was going to check tomorrow!") With my iPhone inexperience this took way longer than necessary, and my friends had to herd me to the front of the store to check out (my eyes never leaving the screen). There, standing in the CVS check-out line, I found out that I had passed and am, indeed, a real honest-to-goodness IBCLC.

Wow! I'm relieved, excited, and a little disbelieving. I've wanted to be an LC for so long, and there was a stretch of years where I couldn't imagine when and how it would be possible (a post on this may be forthcoming). That I really am an IBCLC now is kind of hard to believe - it doesn't feel quite real yet. Maybe because I've already been doing LC work at the hospital pending my results, so on the day-to-day level nothing will change (except my paycheck - all right!) But I think also because I recognize how far I still have to go. Back when I did tae kwon do, they used to tell us that becoming a black belt wasn't the end of your training - instead, it was starting all over with a whole new set of things to learn, knowing that you'll be learning them and refining them for the rest of your life. And that's where I feel like I'm at now - ready to step up to the next level with the recognition of how much I still can learn and practice.

Thanks to everyone for your good wishes and support! I have loved having this blog and the breastfeeding blogging community as part of my education throughout this journey.

(P.S. Wedding was great, I'm back from my trip, and hopefully there will be more posts soon!)