Lactation Program Review: 

Breastfeeding USA’s Breastfeeding Counselor Training

By Stormy Miller

Submitted January 18, 2015
Published February 22, 2018

What year did you take the program? 2014

How long did it take you to complete the program? 4 months (September – December)

Certification or Certificate Offered – Certified Breastfeeding Counselor (CBC)

See here for requirements to apply for Breastfeeding USA’s CBC program

Delivery of Program – Online

Books & Materials Required – Education fee ($50) – includes access to e-book – Counseling the Nursing Mother: A Lactation Consultant’s Guide by Anna Swisher & Judith Lauwers.

Cost of Program (Including books, materials, application fees, etc.) – I paid $75 total – $25 to join Breastfeeding USA and the $50 education fee.

# of L-CERPs, Nursing Contact Hours, CEUs, CPEs, etc. offered – 45 Nursing contact hours, L-CERPs, CPEs; 4.5 CEUs for CNMs

Do this program’s hours meet partial or full requirements for the IBCLC exam’s lactation specific training requirement?  No, they do not. The hours of training only count towards my Breastfeeding Counselor credential. However, if I decide to pursue pathway 1 to qualify for the IBCLC exam, BF USA is a recognized peer support group and my volunteer hours will meet the clinical hour component of pathway 1 (it will take 2 years (500 hours per year) of volunteering as a Breastfeeding Counselor providing individual/in-person group support OR 4 years (250 hours per year) if I provide only telephone and email support) for me to earn the 1000 hours of clinical hours required to qualify to sit for the IBCLE exam .

What did you like about the program?

• Online and self-paced – can go at my own pace and with working full time and having a young breastfeeding toddler at home it is hard. I have been doing the lessons during my pump and lunch breaks at work.
• Price! The price is one of the main reasons why I did the program. Very feasible, even for a mom like me that has a tight budget! Especially not needing to buy the book with the ebook being included. Some candidates purchased the book because they prefer to have the hard copy and they also loan out the book with payment of a deposit.
• Comprehensive course – learned a lot of information; evidence-based Quizzes are open book and can retake to get a better score. Some you can take again as a refresher with no limits. As a breastfeeding mom and having a lot of technical/health science experience, I breezed through the material pretty quickly. Having experience definitely helped.
• Requirement to enroll is that you have breastfed for 12 months, and I think that is very good and adequate. It is a peer counselor program instructors and tutors are very friendly and helpful and gave a lot of helpful additional resources, like extra readings from Nancy Mohrbacher’s website and a few others.
• Gave enrichment to further explore the topics for the lessons. Volunteer opportunities within the company after being accredited. After being accredited, counselors can start up a chapter in their area if there isn’t one already established, even if there is a LLL there in the area.

What did you dislike about the program?

• The lessons do reference page numbers a lot and with the e-book there is no page numbers. That was a little hard to get through. Had a little confusion on which section(s) to read. They only had 1 license when I first started for the e-book, so a lot of times when I tried to access the book someone else was viewing it. But they recommended emailing the pages or chapters to your email address to view later and that helped a lot! By the time I finished they purchased another license so that has been helping.
• At first the modules were a little hard to navigate but it got easier at I got adjusted. They actually just reformatted it which it looks a lot better!
• Some lessons take forever being graded and waiting on feedback.

What would you change about the program? Nothing that I can think of (see dislikes).

How rigorous/time consuming did you find the program?

Because it was self-paced it wasn’t too bad. I work full time and have a 14-15 month old at the time and was still able to do the work. I actually did most of the lessons on my lunch break and pump breaks.

Would you recommend this program to others?

I would definitely recommend it to others. Especially moms that just want to help other moms and have that passion and drive.

now, would you take this program again? Yes.

Do you feel the course and/or certification helped you obtain your goals?

Yes, it helped further my knowledge even with personal breastfeeding experience. And will help with the daycare project to help and support working moms. I felt like this course really prepared me for the “counseling” aspect.

Does our program/credential require you to recertify? If so, how long does the credential last and what is required to recertify? No, it does not.

Would you like to write a review of a Lactation Training Program that you’ve taken? If so, don’t be shy! You can access the review form directly from Galactablog. Or directly online via Google Forms here.

**Disclaimer – The views and opinions expressed in this review are those of the author and do not reflect those of Galactablog. Please note that date of review submission and date of review publishing may be different. It’s up to the individual reader to double check pricing, program requirements, etc. It’s also important to note that these views are not the only source of information about this particular lactation training program.

See here for more program details along with comparison of similar Lactation Training Programs and here for mother-to-mother peer breastfeeding support training programs (mainly USA based).