I don't post much. I'm posting because I did the math this morning and it made me sit down.
We're rural. Nearest town is 20 minutes, nearest anything else is not. My LO is 8 months now but this was back at three weeks, when she wasn't gaining and my milk hadn't come in properly and I was losing my mind about it.
The nearest IBCLC, the actual credential, not a class, was 2 hours and 40 minutes away. I know because I called everyone closer first. There's a hospital 50 minutes from us with a lactation program but it's inpatient only, so unless you're currently admitted you can't be seen. There's a "lactation educator" 30 minutes away who I did see, and who was kind, and who told me things I later found out were wrong. I don't blame her. She wasn't trained for what I brought her. I just didn't know there was a difference between what she had and what I needed, because nobody tells you the letters mean something.
So we drove. My husband drove, I sat in the back next to the car seat, we stopped once each way to feed. Five hours and 20 minutes of driving for a 50 minute appointment. She weighed her, watched a full feed, found a posterior tongue tie that two other people had missed, and told me my flange size was wrong. Which was the single thing that changed everything and took her about 90 seconds to spot.
We did that drive four times.
What I'm actually angry about took me eight months to be able to say. That was never presented to me as unusual. Everyone I spoke to, my OB's office, the pediatrician, the nurse line, talked about it like driving five hours to get a baby weighed was just what you do out here. And it is what you do out here. But it being normal is not the same as it being fine.
I read that something like a third of US counties don't have a birthing hospital or an OB at all, and that people out here travel almost three times as far for care. When I read that number I cried, honestly, because I'd spent eight months thinking I'd handled something badly.
Not really asking anything. I want to know who else is out here. How far is yours? Not your worst-case story. Your actual normal. The drive you don't think about anymore because you've done it so many times.
Kirsten, thank you for this. Blunt about why: "how far is your actual normal, not your worst story" is a better question than any I've asked here!
Georgia's point is the one I can actually do something about and I've been circling it for a while. Listing people where they live instead of where they'll travel makes the map look emptier than the world is. That's my problem to fix, not yours.
Keep the distances coming. I'm collecting them and they're going somewhere.
I'm 36 weeks and in Bozeman and I've been quietly terrified of exactly this, so thank you for writing it down!
My normal so far, and the baby isn't even here yet: nearest birth doula who's taking clients is 90 minutes. I called five. Two never called back, one's booked, one quoted $2,400, one was honest with me that she couldn't commit to a birth that far out and honestly I respect her enormously for saying so.
I keep getting told to just use my local mom Facebook group. I did! The group is 40 people and the answer was the same...
Doula. Answering your Bozeman thing from my side because I think you're being way too hard on yourself.
I drive up to an hour for clients. I don't charge for the drive and most of us don't. But I'm listed at my home address, so if you search your town and I'm 55 minutes away, I do not come up. I'm willing and I'm invisible. There is almost certainly someone within range of you who simply doesn't appear in the search you're running.
The five-people-and-four-are-unavailable thing is real on our end too. I turn away about half my inquiries because I'm full....
IBCLC here. The flange thing making you drive 5 hours to be told in 90 seconds is the most infuriating sentence I've read this month, and it's infuriating partly because it's so common.
On the letters, since you're right that nobody explains it. IBCLC is a board credential. Clinical hours in the hundreds, a pathway, an exam, recertification. A "lactation educator" or "lactation counselor" is usually a course. Sometimes a weekend, sometimes a week. Those people are often very good and they're the reason a lot of moms make it through, and they're also not trained to assess a posterior tie...
Nobody good is offended by it. I needed that sentence eight months ago. I remember specifically not asking because I thought it would sound like I was accusing her of something.