This Counseling Guide is designed to help family planning counsellors explain when and how to use the Lactational Amenorrhea Method (LAM) of birth control. Created by the LAM Inter-agency Working Group (LAM IWG), it is a 2-page illustrated card in poster style that includes the following steps for counsellors:

1. Explain who can use LAM - the 3 physical criteria for women to be able to use LAM
2. Explain how to use LAM - the behavioural components of using LAM for pregnancy prevention, including: using breastfeeding to sustain amenorrhoea, while considering another form of protection from pregnancy (With a cue for the counsellor to introduce other methods)
3. Explain who cannot use LAM - the signs that women are fertile and cannot succeed using LAM
4. Counsell those who cannot or choose not to use LAM - explanations of the other possible methods of pregnancy prevention and the timing of their use related to postpartum breastfeeding
5. Encourage the woman to continue breastfeeding and wait at least 2 years for her next pregnancy - support for behaviours that reflect medical evidence on infant and mother health.

The Informational Client Card is a smaller format describing the same information and using the same illustrations as the Counselling Guide, but addresses women who have given birth and are breastfeeding their infants. It lists criteria for using LAM with illustrations identical to the Counseling Guide, and then asks the question "Do YOU met all 3 of these criteria?" It then uses the illustrations from the guide to show the essential behaviours necessary to use the LAM method successfully. Finally, it gives illustrations of the birth control methods appropriate for family planning immediately following the use of the LAM method, along with the recommendations to continue breastfeeding the infant and to wait 2 years to begin another pregnancy, based on expectations of good health for the mother and baby.

Both are available in colour as downloadable PDF format materials. According to LAM IWG, "These LAM tools are available in English with African images. They will be available in French and Spanish in the near future." (June 2009)

2 for each material

Institute for Reproductive Health website on June 20 2009.