Texas WIC (Women, Infants, & Children)

4/25/11-4/29/11
WIC provides services for pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women, infants, and children up to 5 years of age. Services provided include nutrition education/counseling, food packages, breastfeeding promotion/education, and access to prenatal, maternal, and pediatric health-care services. It is funded by the USDA, Food and Nutrition Services. The 21 WIC clinics in Dallas County serve more than 111,000 participants per month. Nationally, WIC serves 8.7 million each month. Back in the 1960's national nutrition surveys showed that children from low income families had high rates of iron-deficiency anemia and poor growth patterns and pregnant women from low income families had poor pregnancy outcomes. I observed the registered dietitian and counseled high risk clients: weight gain above or below recommended range during pregnancy, weight loss during pregnancy, and children less than the 5th percentile or greater than the 95th percentile in weight for height. I counseled a Spanish speaking client by communicating through a language line. It was difficult to hold eye contact with the client while trying to shout into the phone and it took twice as long because everything the client or I said needed to be translated. Counseling is very challenging for me and a skill that I definitely need practice with - I get nervous. Some things I need to work on include: establishing comfortable rapport with clients, asking open-ended questions, and making SMART goals for the client (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely). I spent part of one day with a peer breastfeeding counselor, she promoted breastfeeding by sharing it's many benefits with new moms. I taught a class to WIC participants called "Nothing but the Tooth," it talked about proper tooth care during pregnancy and infancy (limiting sweet/sticky foods, baby bottle tooth decay). I'm thankful I had a class with people who participated. It was fun seeing so many cute babies and kids, but not so fun when they were being naughty or screaming.

On Wednesday, I turned 24. I got to share my birthday with my internship director, Kristi =) I'm so excited I got to celebrate by having dinner at Rafa's Cafe Mexicano with some of the interns. We had a great time catching up! For class on Thursday, Alyssa made Kristi and I a Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake with chocolate frosting! YUM!

Birthday dinner at Rafa's Cafe Mexicano with interns

Amberlee drawing on the table

Alyssa with her masterpiece =)

After WIC on Friday I met some interns at Yogurtland, a yummy frozen yogurt place where the ice cream is weighed by the ounce and you can add any and all kinds of toppings you can imagine. I made a chocolaty-coffee creation with all the chocolate toppings I saw. Megan and I went for a walk that led to having a few beers and then doing a work-out dance video at 10:30 at night. Fun times!

Saturday I volunteered with some other interns at the Get Kidz Fit Fest at Market Hall in Dallas. There were all kinds of sports and fitness activities to try, cooking demonstrations, and booths educating the 5000+ kids and parents about nutrition and wellness. I was at the portion distortion booth explaining proper serving sizes. After, Megan and I went to a very unique and fun work-out class, then destroyed our hard work by eating Raising Cane's chicken fingers and french fries.