How to Prepare for Your Visit at Village Lactation

Breastfeeding support can be dynamic and complex. 

To ensure your clinic time is used effectively, here is some information to help your visit with us run smoothly.

 

How to book your initial consultation visit

• Once we process your referral, you will receive a link to register with our secure email communication and online booking program called Pomelo. If you already use Pomelo for another office, please ensure to use a NEW email when signing up for pomelo with our office. This is necessary for you to be able to return online questionnaires and for online booking of follow up visits. If you only have one email and are already registered on Pomelo with another office, please let our clinic know which other office you are registered with. We can have Pomelo merge accounts and then when you login in there will be a dropdown to choose which clinic you want to access.
• Our team IBCLC, Brittney, will call families on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons to book their initial consult visits. 

Prior to your arrival in our office

• You will receive a message with a pre-visit online questionnaire. Completing this questionnaire will help our team learn more about your medical health, pregnancy, birth, lactation and feeding experience so far. This must be completed prior to your initial visit. 
• Please aim to arrive 5 minutes before your scheduled appointment. 
   

What to bring

• Both the lactating parent & infant must be present for your assessment.
• Alberta Health Care cards for you and baby.
• A face mask if you would like to wear one. 
• Wear comfortable clothing in which you are comfortable breastfeeding.
• Spare baby clothes, spare diapers, wipes, and 1-2 receiving blankets.
• Any feeding supplement being used such as expressed breast milk, donor milk, or infant formula, and any feeding method being used (bottles, SNS, etc).
• Any baby weight measurements you may have from your doctors, midwife or public health.
• A list (or specific knowledge) of your prescription and herbal medications.

 

What you can leave at home or in your vehicle

• If you have limitations to your weight carrying capacity (for example due to recent c-section) please let us know if you need assitance carrying your car seat. 
• You are welcome to bring a support person. Siblings are welcome to attend, but we ask that you please don't bring anyone who is ill into the office to help protect all our families.  

Preparing your infant

• The doctor will do an assessment of your baby feeding either at the breast or bottle depending on how you are feeding your infant and based on your goals for your feeding relationship. Please let us know if you do not consent to having the doctor observe you directly breastfeeding/chestfeeding. This may limit our abilities to perform a complete assessment, but we certainly want to respect your wishes. 
• Please bring your baby hungry, but not starving. This can mean different lengths of time for different babies. If your baby is very hungry while waiting, please only give a small amount of a feeding to keep everybody comfortable.

 

What to expect for your visit

• You will be checked in and brought to a clinic room. If baby is sleeping, they can stay in their car seat/carrier/your arms until the doctor arrives. 
• You will then wait in the clinic room for the doctor. Please try not to feed your baby before the doctor arrives, though if you must feed please only do a small amount for your comfort or theirs.
• Initial consult visits for parent and infant are scheduled for 45-60 minutes. 
• Initial antenatal visits (while you are still pregnant) are scheduled for 45-60 minutes. 
• Follow up appointments are scheduled for 30-45 minutes.
• Phone visit lengths (for follow up only) are variable. 
• Your doctor may have a learner present, such as a medical trainee or a physician who is learning more about how to support breastfeeding families.

 

Oral restrictions/Ankyloglossia/Tongue Ties. 

• Frenotomies (the procedure treatment for tongue ties) are rarely performed on the initial consultation visit. If this is a reason for your visit, rest assured that you and your baby will have a thorough assessment and discussion with your provider about this concern.
• Restricted oral tissue or “tongue ties” are about more than just the presence or absence of tissue in the baby's mouth, it is about the function of the baby's tongue to extract milk effectively and to be able to latch without causing trauma or damage to the mother's breasts.

 

While You Are Waiting to be Seen

• Please ensure that you have appropriate follow up arranged for you and your infant with your referring provider while waiting to be seen by our lactation specialist. It is important that a skilled professional is monitoring your infant's weight and any symptoms that you may be having while you are waiting to see us. 
• Some of the following websites/videos can be helpful for getting breastfeeding off to a good start:
  • Global Health Media - Select Breastfeeding Category. In particular, consider watching the “Attaching your baby at the breast” and “Positions for breastfeeding. 
  • Our patient resources section has some of our more frequently utilized handouts, please feel free to review these.