Breastfeeding Essentials: From Assessment to Problem Solving Lecture Pack

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, is a co-author, with Diana West, Linda Smith, and Teresa Pitman, of La Leche League International’s Sweet Sleep Nighttime and Naptime Strategies for the Breastfeeding Family. She is also a co-author, with Diana West and Teresa Pitman, of the 8th edition of LLLl's Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Other publications include chapters in Genna's Supporting Sucking Skills in Breastfeeding Infants and Smith's The ABC's of Private Practice, and journal articles and essays on latching, lip ties, D-MER, motherhood in other mammals, and breastfeeding language. Diane self-publishes more than 75 breastfeeding handouts for mothers. She has spoken in over 40 states and provinces and in Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Kathy Parkes is a sought-after speaker and webinar presenter as well as a published author. She has lived all over the world, settling in San Antonio, Texas after her Air Force husband retired. Kathy is a Registered Nurse with a Masters in Nursing Education and received her International Board Certified Lactation Consultant designation in 1992. Her private practice, Breastfeeding Perspectives, adds to her over 30 years of lactation experiences, which include WIC staff and clients, in-patient hospital work on L&D, postpartum, and NICU, taking a hospital to Baby-Friendly designation, setting up a lactation visitation program for both a home health agency and for the largest birth doula organization in San Antonio, and providing home and office lactation visits for private clients. She specializes in tethered oral tissues (tongue-and-lip ties), milk supply problems, multiples, and preterm/late preterm infants.
On the fun side, Kathy met her husband of 47 years as she was jumping out of the airplane he was flying. (You could say she fell for him!) She loves animals, traveling, and gardening. Most of all, she loves teaching others about breastfeeding.

Diana West is an IBCLC in private practice. She is the co-author of “Sweet Sleep: Naptime and Nighttime Strategies for the Breastfeeding Family,” the 8th edition of La Leche League International’s “The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding,” “The Breastfeeding Mother’s Guide to Making More Milk,” the clinical monograph “Breastfeeding After Breast and Nipple Procedures,” and ILCA’s popular “Clinician’s Breastfeeding Triage Tool.” She is the author of the “Defining Your Own Success: Breastfeeding After Breast Reduction Surgery.” She is on the Editorial Review Board for the “Journal of Clinical Lactation,” a La Leche League Leader and the Director of Media Relations for La Leche League International. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and is the administrator of the popular BFAR.org, LowMilkSupply.org, and LactSpeak.com websites. She lives with her three sons and one husband in the picturesque mountains of western New Jersey in the United States.

Lisa Marasco has been working with breastfeeding mothers for 35 years and has been Internationally Board Certified since 1993. She holds a Master’s degree in Human Development with specialization in Lactation Consulting and was designated a Fellow of ILCA in 2009.

Lisa is co-author of Making More Milk: The Breastfeeding Guide to Increasing Your Milk Production, a contributing author to the Core Curriculum for Interdisciplinary Lactation Care, and a Cochrane Collaborative author. She is employed by WIC of Santa Barbara County while she continues to research, write and speak. In addition, Lisa is affiliated with La Leche League of So. Calif/Nevada, and serves on the Breastfeeding Coalition of Santa Barbara County.

Nancy Mohrbacher was born and raised in the Chicago area, where she lives today. She is a board-certified lactation consultant who has been helping nursing mothers since 1982. Her breastfeeding books for parents and professionals include Breastfeeding Answers Made Simple and its Pocket Guide; Breastfeeding Made Simple(with Kathleen Kendall-Tackett); Working and Breastfeeding Made Simple; and Breastfeeding Solutions and its companion app for Android and iPhone.

Nancy currently contracts with hospitals to improve breastfeeding practices, writes for many publications, and speaks at events around the world. Nancy was in the first group of 16 to be honored for her lifetime contributions to breastfeeding with the designation FILCA, Fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association.

Barbara Wilson-Clay became a La Leche League Leader in 1982. She certified as an IBCLC and entered private practice in Austin, Texas in 1987. Barbara was named a Fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association in 2008. She recently retired from her practice, which specialized in difficult breastfeeding situations. With a client load of 400-450 visits yearly, Barbara garnered a wealth of clinical and counseling experience and a trove of clinical teaching photos. In partnership with Kay Hoover, she created The Breastfeeding Atlas, which was translated into Chinese in 2019 by Fudan University Press. A Korean translation will be published in September 2020.

Barbara has been a citizen advocate for breastfeeding in the Texas legislature and helped pass a landmark law protecting breastfeeding rights. She is one of the co-founders of the non-profit Mothers Milk Bank at Austin, and retired as Vice President of the Board of Directors in 2010. She continues to serve on the Advisory Board. Barbara's research and commentaries have appeared in the Journal of Human Lactation, Archives of Disease in Childhood, the International Breastfeeding Journal, and others. She has served on various editorial review boards and contributed chapters to several lactation textbooks.