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| Graphic credit to USLCA |
When my son Jade was six month old, I quit my job as a full time reporter and became a breastfeeding activist. Of course I still work as a freelance writer to pay my bills, but I spent a big chunk of my time on volunteering for local breastfeeding coalitions. Four years later, I co-founded a cultural breastfeeding coalition named Asian and Pacific Islander Breastfeeding TaskForce (APIBTF) of Great Los Angeles.
Now enough years have gone by to enable my children to understand my work, we sometimes discuss the events that lead to the founding of APIBTF. Jasper, my younger son, maintains that his birth inspired it. But Jade, who is four years Jasper’s senior, always says that it started long before that. Jade said it began the summer I went back to work after giving birth to him, when my rights to pump at work was denied by the company.
When they consulted me, I said they were both right. But, I added, if they want to take a broad view of the movement, it really began with Carmen Rezak and Wendy McGrail. Carmen is the Corporate Maternal-Child Health Quality Coordinator at AHMC Healthcare, a corporation that owns seven hospitals in Los Angeles County. Wendy is the Senior Nutritionist/Regional Breastfeeding Liaison at PHFE WIC, our local WIC program. If Carmen hadn’t been bothered so much by the low in-hospital breastfeeding rates among Asian parents, Wendy would never have called up the first planning meeting for an Asian breastfeeding task force, and where would the APIBTF be if they hadn’t?
Continue to read a journey that took me from mother to breastfeeding advocate, and the birth of AANHPI Breastfeeding Week on US Lactation Consultant Association's blog: https://uslca.org/amplify/apibtf/
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