I just read this on Diane Wiessinger's website.... And it makes me think
long and hard. http://www.wiessinger.baka.com/bfing/index.html

If the human race will allow the practice of breastfeeding (not
bottlefeeding breastmilk, etc, but actually  direct breastfeeding)...to be
extinguished because of designer formulas with concocted components mirrored
on breastmilk components, perhaps there is nothing we can do to stop this.
But I believe that mothers will not let this wonderful practice slip
away....because there will always be mothers who see through these things
and see the truth about how wonderful breastfeeding is in terms of
parenting, health, and connection.

It seems to me that the only way to have a hope of stemming this tide of
corporate greed re: designer formulas is to help and persuade mothers, one
by one, of the value of breastfeeding. By helping these same mothers and
babies breastfeed successfully, we will help to preserve this mothering
tool.  Just my opinion, but I believe this is the tack to take.  Here is
Diane's piece. It speaks to this issue much better than I can.

"It's Not Really About The Milk

©2000 Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC

     You won't "get it" at first.  At first it's all about technique, and
position, and time, and swallowing, and soreness, and feeling as if your
whole world has narrowed to Feeding The Baby.  Those of us who have enjoyed
nursing our children are on the other side of a great emotional gulf from
you.  We can't explain it, we can only try to help you across the bridge, to
where you can see for yourself.  If you stay caught up in this as a feeding
method, you may never get all the way across the bridge.  But oh, the view
from the other side!  At the least, you need to know it's there.

     Those of us who "got it" wouldn't feel guilty if we were prevented from
nursing our next child.  We'd feel anguished.  "Guilt" means you didn't do
something for someone else that you "should" have done whether or not you
enjoyed it yourself.  "Anguish" means great pain and grief, as if you've had
a piece of yourself torn away.

     Imagine having to move by shifting your weight left, then moving your
right leg forward, knee slightly bent at first but gradually straightening,
right heel landing as you rise on the ball of your left foot, swinging your
left arm forward in reverse synchrony with your right as it moves back, then
performing a mirror image of the whole process for the next step.  Not fun,
not easy, not graceful, not something you want to keep working at. But
imagine the ease and pleasure of simply... walking.  Now imagine someone
telling you that you have to give it up.  Guilt?  Or anguish?

     I wish I could convey to you the simple, thought-less, vast, delicious
pleasure of nursing my children.  Once I "got it," I didn't "feed" them,
didn't worry about intervals, didn't hold back.  We nursed when they wanted
and when I wanted - even just to keep them quiet while I was on the phone. 
At night, nursing was a quiet mending of the day's disorders.  Oh, not
always, but as someone said, "Of course there's an inconvenience to
nursing.  But there's an inconvenience to being a mother."  Breastfeeding
was a fundamental, essential connection for us, and made everything else -
from newborn diapers to two-year-old tantrums - far, far simpler.  Then
there's the ego-building experience of being the perfect center of another
person's universe. 

     Can you achieve the same bond through bottle-feeding?  No.  Remember
that a breastfeeding mother is in a specific hormonal state.  Her whole body
responds to her baby in a way that a bottle-feeding mother's or a
baby-sitter's or a father's cannot.  Her infant receives all his calories in
a full-bodied, full-mouthed, skin-on-skin embrace, always from his beloved
mother.  Her older child comes to her to have growing pains of all kinds
soothed simply in a way unique to breastfeeding.

     Breastfeeding is a newborn's first relationship, designed to continue
throughout a child's early years.  As a culture, we tell ourselves - without
evidence - that the absence of this fundamental human relationship has no
longterm implications for mother or child or family or society.

     I have enjoyed our children at every stage so far - and they are now
young adults. Their father and I felt as if we did no real parenting after
the first ten years or so; we sat back and enjoyed them.  This is unusual in
America today.  Is it partly related to our start in a long, luxurious
breastfeeding relationship?  I think so.  And like every woman who has
reached the other side of the bridge, I hope I can extend a hand back to
help you across.  The view is irreplaceable! "
 

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