Hundreds of retired IBCLCs who are still writing and teaching, and plan to for many years to come, are about to be restrained and impacted by IBLCE’s limited five years retired status. Beginning in 2027, many of our favorite lactation authors and speakers will begin to lose their credentials when the five-year “IBCLC Retired” status expires. 

This petition provides a platform for all of us who are or will be affected by the “IBLCE Retired” credential to speak up.

The “IBCLC Retired” credential is shorthand for years of knowledge and skill that did not disappear on our last day of work. Many retiring IBCLCs hope to use their knowledge not to practice but to educate and write, well into the future.

Yet those potential authors and speakers will lose their standing as former lactation specialists when IBLCE’s five-year-term, one-term-only credential expires. Other health-related fields with a fee-based retirement credential offer a multiple-year repeating fee or a one-time fee for ongoing use. IBLCE does not. 

There are 33,500 IBCLCs worldwide, and someday, each and every one of them will be affected by this limitation.

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Below is a personal testimony from one of our fellow IBCLC Retired members, Diane Wiessinger:

My co-author from a dozen years ago and I are both retired. We have another paper almost ready to go. Post-retirement, I did a virtual presentation for GOLD. Alia has done podcasts and interviews. During the formula shortage, I wrote a piece on how to nurse a baby. Alia is working on a second edition of her book. Our work histories give us credibility. 

We’ve both paid the fee to be able to put “IBCLC Retired” under our signature lines.  The trouble is that privilege extends for only 5 years and only once.  Thereafter we can mention our decades of experience in narrative form but with no acknowledgment in our signature lines – the place where people glance for a quick measure of the competence of the source.

It’s not uncommon for other allied health fields to require payment for continued use of a retirement designation.  But as far as I know, IBLCE is the only health-related group that denies any form of signature-line “competence shorthand” after 5 years of retirement. 

I did a thesis on dustbathing behavior in quail nearly a half-century ago.  If I do anything related to breastfeeding two years from now, I can still cite my bird behavior credential in my signature line, but not my 30 years of practice as a lactation specialist. Humpf!

If you’d like to see something more permanent available to our retired colleagues or future selves, please sign out this petition link and pass it along.

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We, the undersigned, recognize the continuing value of our retired peers’ wisdom to our profession and to the public.  We urge IBLCE to do the same and create a renewable “IBCLC Retired” credential.