Liz Larrabee, RN IBCLC
I am a proud, blessed, and humble mom of four incredible children ages 11 through 23 years old. I have had the opportunity to live in many states all over mainland United States and gave birth in four of these states. I also had the privilege to live overseas in Okinawa and travel all over Asia with my four young children before settling down and calling Hawaii home.
I gave birth to my first baby, Dylan, at 21 years old while completing my Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Here, as a young mother, I was blessed with great support amidst anthropology professors and students that had a very global perspective on parenting, birthing, and breastfeeding. I found that in an environment and culture that was conducive to physiological birth, breastfeeding, and attachment-style parenting, I was able to have a beautiful and empowering birth and go on to exclusively breastfeed my first baby for over a year with no complications and few obstacles.
My experience with my second child, Marlee, while attending Nursing School in New Mexico was very different and much more like what most parents experience in our society today. Without the same support I received with my first baby, my birth experience and breastfeeding journey did not go as I had expected. Rigid and insensitive birthing practices, unnecessary separation from my baby, and a general lack of support had long-lasting consequences for myself and my daughter.
Although I went on to have two more beautiful, natural, and uncomplicated births and was able to exclusively breastfeed my Oliver, and Reef, these two starkly different experiences with my first and second children provided the motivation and passion to pursue a career in birthing and breastfeeding support for families.
After graduating from nursing school I worked as an RN in a mother/baby unit at a busy hospital in California before becoming a childbirth educator, an IBCLC, and more recently a Doula. I strongly feel that community education and a cultural shift is necessary to see the changes in society needed to facilitate respectful maternity care, improve birth experiences, and fulfill infant feeding goals. I am optimistic and see great progress over the last 23 years from both healthcare providers and families—but we have a long long way to go before current knowledge is imbued on all and improvements are routinely seen in our systems’ policies.
I now own and operate a birthing and breastfeeding private practice on Oahu and the Big Island. In addition, to home visits, virtual consults, prenatal retreats, and attending births, several colleagues and I also facilitate monthly childbirth classes and FREE breastfeeding support meetings. I have worked hard over the years to gain the knowledge necessary to provide empathetic, open-minded, and comprehensive care to families for their whole pregnancy, birth, and early parenting journey. I am grateful to see this dream come to fruition and would consider myself privileged to assist you in fulfilling your own birthing and infant feeding dreams—whatever they may be.