Hi all

I am doing a workshop entitled "behaviours and emotions of mothers whose
breastfeeding relationship is threatened".  The thrust of the workshop is to
highlight the interplay of hormones in breastfeeding between mother and
baby, and consider ways in which a mother expresses her emotions and
feelings when this relationship is threatened eg breast refusal, being told
that she needs to suddenly wean by a HP,pain due to cracked nipples,
percieved or real lack of support for her choice to breast etc.

I expect that grief and fear are the roots alot of behaviours that we
experience when we counsel mothers whose breastfeeding relationship is
threatened.  It is displayed in anger, projection, justification of action,
depression, guilt, denial, confusion, reduced self esteem etc.

I have not been able to find any references for this and is based on my
reflection of working with mums and babies over the last 5 years.  I do have
a basic knowledge of grief. I expect that owing to the play of hormones,
bonding, natural focusing on the baby, that the sense of grief would be
somewhat more overwhelming than in situations not involving a mother and
baby.  One of the issues that we work with is that those emotions and
behaviours are trivialized ("after all ABM is just as good" or "baby thrives
on it anyway" or "mothers milk is not good anought" and so on in the western
world. Bonding and seeing the mother and baby as an attached unit is still
undervalued in many hospitals, HPs and in society at large.

Has anyone got any references that I could read and use?  Are there any
ideas about how to present some of the concepts?  The workshop will be for
some 20-25 Australian Breastfeeding counsellors, and then next year am
hoping to repeat it at the Qld State branch conference. You could reply to
the list or privately.

Thanks in anticipation

Ruth Fiedler
Australia

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