{"id":29,"date":"2014-06-27T00:56:04","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T00:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/?p=29"},"modified":"2014-06-27T00:56:04","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T00:56:04","slug":"the-accidental-lactation-teacher-from-housewifemother-to-airline-secretary-to-student-to-nurse-to-practitoner-to-teacher-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"The Accidental Lactation Teacher – From housewife\/mother to airline secretary, to student to nurse to practitoner to teacher Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE PEDIATRIC NURSE PRACTITIONER\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026A PHYSICIAN\u2019S ROLE AT LAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right after graduation in 1973, my children\u2019s pediatrician, Paul Fleiss, offered me what he called \u201ca mother\u2019s job.\u201d\u00a0 I stared at him baffled. \u201cA mother\u2019s job\u201d he explained was an RN in his office that arrives after her kids leave for school and gets home before they arrive back home.\u00a0 No nights, no weekends and the same hospital pay.\u00a0\u00a0 As if to make sure I took the job, just as this was offered, ……..my husband lost another job.\u00a0 So off I went to work as a nurse.<\/p>\n

After a year in his pediatric office, Dr. Fleiss said, \u201cI am wasting your talent here.\u00a0 You need to go back to school and be a nurse practitioner.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBACK TO SCHOOL!!\u201d\u00a0 I thought, no way!!\u00a0\u00a0 He wrote out a check and said, \u201cGo to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) or you\u2019re fired.\u201d\u00a0 Talk about tough love!<\/p>\n

And so the thoughts started up again.\u00a0 UCLA, UCLA, UCLA\u2026\u2026..I surrendered again but faster this time, applied and was accepted into the next class.\u00a0 I was probably accepted because I was one of the few applicants who applied with a preceptor all arranged!\u00a0 Doing the program along with everything else… being a wife, mother and La Leche League (LLL) leader was hard.\u00a0 I memorized as I traveled on the freeway to the Harbor UCLA campus, 40 minutes each way.\u00a0 I was so absorbed in memorizing that I kept getting speeding tickets!\u00a0\u00a0 Finding more skillful ways around my learning disorder, I ended the course with an overall 92. I took the very first Pediatric Nurse Practitioner board certification exam ever offered in the nation and passed.<\/p>\n

Dr. Fleiss’ practice was an eclectic mix of Hollywood at the time:\u00a0 lower socioeconomic families, the MO Town record crowd and a few celebrities as well.\u00a0 Dr. Fleiss put me through my paces for every baby\/child exam I presented to him and had me hit the books that night for every diagnosis we made that had not come up before.\u00a0 My breastfeeding zeal ran right into the “non-La Leche League” families who were semi-committed to breastfeeding.\u00a0 He taught me “A little breastfeeding is better than no breastfeeding at all.” \u00a0 I developed the importance of the baby\/child while positively reinforcing the parent’s growth in discovering that child of theirs under Dr. Fleiss’ example. These\u00a0 stories deserve their own post and I will do that later.<\/p>\n

I worked for Dr. Fleiss for a few years as a nurse practitioner in his Hollywood practice until I was offered a job in 1975 doing the pediatric well child care in a birth center in Culver City, California with Dr. Victor Berman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dr. Berman’s practice was a more middle class group of families wanting a natural childbirth and definitely breastfeeding. In those two beginning practices I got to see breastfeeding instead of only handling breastfeeding concerns over the phone as I often did with LLL moms.\u00a0 I discovered that women who were not sore held their babies differently than those who did have sore nipples.<\/p>\n

I began to share what I learned with new mothers and it worked to solve their problems!\u00a0 I even presented the concept at a pediatric congress in Israel in 1980 which led to my first publication (and the Breastfeeding Techniques That Work!<\/em> handout).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>Accepting a job closer to home in 1979, I joined Dr. Rick Johnson\u2019s practice in Pasadena, California. Dr. Dave Tappan and Dr. Bill Sears joined us over time.\u00a0 I was independently seeing 500 mostly middle class families within that collaborative pediatric practice for the next ten years.\u00a0 It was truly a physician role.\u00a0 As a pediatric nurse practitioner, I finally came close to the dreamed of role of the physician at last. Breastfeeding evaluation was naturally a part of every well child visit. I resigned as a La Leche League Leader after 20 years in 1983.<\/p>\n

At that time my husband left our family and being a single mom, I was grateful to accept a position In Santa Monica, California with Drs. Gurfied. Wasson, Varga, & Tardio at Tenth Street Pediatrics in 1989. That practice was challenging in dealing with an entirely different socio-economic patient population.\u00a0 While explaining to one new mom about how easy it was to breastfeed because you could take your baby anywhere.\u00a0 She replied, \u201cWhat do you think I have a maid for?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I adapted to this new group of patients but found myself becoming more of an advocate for the baby. Inner city and middle class moms were so different in how they viewed their role and the baby.\u00a0 Over time the moms in this practice began to proudly tell me they were \u201ca hands-on mom\u201d as compared to some of their friends. Cool. Our practice became “the breastfeeding place” and I was there for 17 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE PEDIATRIC NURSE PRACTITIONER\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026A PHYSICIAN\u2019S ROLE AT LAST Right after graduation in 1973, my children\u2019s pediatrician, Paul Fleiss, offered me what he called \u201ca mother\u2019s job.\u201d\u00a0 I stared at him baffled. \u201cA mother\u2019s job\u201d he explained was an RN in his office that arrives after her kids leave for school and gets home before they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-as-a-peds-nurse-practitioner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geddesproduction.com\/Kittie-Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}