I know you’re wondering…

Booking in with an IBCLC is a great choice if you or your baby (or both of you!) are having a hard time with feeding. You can see an IBCLC for any problem under the sun- pain with latching, baby not being able to latch reliably, too much milk, not enough milk, infections, mastitis, pumping issues, figuring out combination feeding or bottle feeding your pumped milk, bottle aversion or nursing strikes, poor weight gain, a suspected tongue tie or lip tie, a prenatal appointment to get you off to a strong start, or an appointment to discuss weaning your baby.

An IBCLC can’t solve every single problem, but they can certainly help and also send you in the right direction if you or your baby need to be seen by an MD or a different type of specialist.

You will be able to submit your claim as a home visit from a nurse because I am an RN as well an an IBCLC. Certain insurance companies will cover more than others. People who have a health spending account can get the full appointment covered, assuming they still have money to spend in that account for the year. Feel free to follow up with me to let me know how much your insurance covered for you. If you are frustrated with your insurance company, tell them so! Companies only change when we tell them to change. Seeing an IBCLC is widely viewed as preventative healthcare in more progressive countries. Breastfeeding leads to better longterm health outcomes for both mom and baby, so for an insurance company not to cover it, makes no sense.

I do not offer direct billing at this time. In order to do so, my clinic would have to apply with several insurance providers in order to link my practice with their services. At the moment, I am focusing on my services, and I am leaving the insurance claim up to my clients. Claiming a bill takes less than 5 minutes, and often you are paid out within a couple of days.

No!

Someone calling themselves a “lactation counsellor” has not completed the education, lactation-specific practice hours in clinic or hospital settings, and has not sat and passed their board certifying exam. They are providing a service, yes, but they are not monitored for quality of any sort, and they have zero code of conduct to follow.

If it doesn’t say IBCLC on the tin, then that’s not what it is!

At the moment, I am able to see people living up to 20 km outside of the anthony henday. This allows me just enough time to get to the next appointment, even if they are directly across the city and just as far out as you are.

If you live further out than that and feel like you specifically want me to come and see you, please use my contact form to ask me to come and see you. I will be charging $4/km for every km driven past my 20km city radius, and appointments outside of my zone will be booked as the last appointment of the day.

Don’t bother cleaning your house! But please do consider removing distractions from the house who may get in the way of you utilizing your time with me (ahem, curious toddlers who have nobody else to play with but us, or folks in your family who have not been supportive of your breastfeeding). If you have a pump and would like to problem solve a pumping issue during your appointment, have it out and ready to go.

In a perfect world, your baby is going to feed during the appointment, even just for a small period of time. In order to achieve this, try to keep in mind your baby’s usual wake window lengths. If you know baby is going to want to feed too close to our appointment on the day of, please do a smaller feed so that your baby will be hungry again when I’m there. Offering skin to skin in place of a full feeding is a handy way to keep your baby calm and happy without having a completely full tummy.

Although I love pets of all shapes and sizes, when pets see a stranger in their home who are reaching for their owner and their new baby, they can be unpredictable. Please ensure they are safely locked in a different part of the house while I am visiting you, or have a family member borrow them for the day or take them for a walk.

Included in your patient intake forms is a note section where you can tell me anything particular about parking at your home. If I need a code to enter in the guest book at an apartment building, for example, please let me know.

Try your best to cancel your appointment ahead of time if you no longer feel the need to be seen for the issue that you have been experiencing. If you cancel an appointment with less than 24 hours notice, you will be charged a cancellation fee.
If you wake up on the day of your appointment feeling unwell, text or call and let me know. Lactation consulting is important work for mothers and babies, and as such, being mildly ill isn’t a reason to cancel your appointment. I am happy to wear a mask and provide you with one as well. If you wake up feeling moderately to severely ill and need to rebook for a later date, just call me and let me know and we’ll move your appointment to the following week. If by that time, your feeding issue has resolved, just cancel your appointment within the allotted time to avoid a late cancel fee.

A late cancel is a fee of 50% of the appointment price. A no show is a fee of the full appointment price.

A no show for a home visit is me showing up, knocking on your door, and nobody answering. In the event that this happens, I will call the number in your patient file, and I will stay at your address for 10-15 minutes while waiting for a response. In the event that you are quite late for your appointment, whether or not I am able to provide a full appointment time to you will depend on if I have another client booked directly afterwards or not. I can’t validate being severely late for the following client if you are late coming home from another appointment.

The way that I structure my appointments typically leaves me with plenty of time to get from client to client. However, in the event that I may be late due to the distance from my last client to you, I will text you to let you know. This is simply the nature of home visits. The convenience that you gain from not having to pack up yourself and your baby to make it to a clinic appointment is the tradeoff for the chance that I may get caught in traffic on my way to you. Whether I’m late or early, you will still be seen for the entire time that you have reserved for yourself.

In the event that I am able to see you earlier than planned, I will also text you to offer that. You don’t have to say yes just because I’m offering, though!

You can google your local la leche league and go to their next weekly meeting! These meetings are free, and they are group meetings for moms, by women who have joined the la leche league. They are not typically IBCLC’s, and as such, they are not charging you to attend. These group meetings are a great place to go if you have questions that need to be addressed, but that don’t seem serious enough to book an appointment for. This is a great place to expand your sisterhood of mom friends!

All IBCLC’s have the same scope of practice, technically, but doctors are able to do three things that a “regular” (RN, LPN, or non-nurse) IBCLC cannot: diagnoses, prescriptions, and procedures.

Diagnoses: doctors are able to officially diagnose conditions for moms and babies. That may be through the same style of assessment that a non-MD does, or through ordering tests, like swabs, bloodwork, biopsies, etc. If you have concerns about your hormones in regards to milk production, your breast health, or your baby’s health, including ongoing poor weight gain despite adequate feeding, you should be making an appointment with an MD, preferably one who is also an IBCLC.

Prescriptions: only MD’s and NP’s can write a prescription for you. If you are wanting to try medication in order to see if it can increase your breast milk production, then you need to make an appointment with an MD or an NP. A holistically-minded professional will order tests to investigate the cause of low milk supply if they are writing prescriptions for medications.

Procedures: if you know that you need your baby’s oral ties revised, your options are to see an MD or NP who has revision clipping in their scope of practice, or you need to arrange to see a pediatric dentist for a laser revision. Please be aware that if you opted out of vitamin k for baby at birth, care providers may refuse to revise oral ties until baby is a certain age to avoid the possibility of increased bleeding.

Essentially, Mommas and babies with complex issues should be seeing MD’s or NP’s with IBCLC credentials. These offices sometimes have long wait lists, so seeing a non-MD IBCLC in the meantime, if you haven’t already, may provide you with a lot of needed support.