How do I Become a Lactation Consultant?

IBCLCs (International Board Certified Lactation Consultants) are allied health care providers who are trained to prevent, recognize, and solve breastfeeding problems and to focus exclusively on the needs of the nursing mother and infant. Lactation consulting is a really good field to enter because more and more hospitals and doctor’s offices are hiring lactation consultants each year. The IBCLC designation is really the only professional certification that counts as far as hospitals are concerned.

Anyone can call themselves a “breastfeeding consultant” or a “lactation specialist,” sometimes after taking a workshop or two, but to become an IBCLC requires a lot of hard work, long hours, and very specialized training. Up until 1985, there was no professional certification for lactation specialists. In that year, ILCA (International Lactation Consultant Association) developed a formal process to establish minimum standards for professional competence and to certify qualified individuals as IBCLCs.

The process involves many thousands of hours of clinical experience related to breastfeeding, a number of hours of credits obtained by attending breastfeeding workshops, and passing a rigorous all day exam that is administered once a year at different sites around the world. ILCA keeps making the requirements harder and harder each year.