Whew! I step away from the computer for 36 hours and look what happens - a
whole rich thread on the distinctions between using modern communications
technology to continue the one-to-one or group support we have always done,
and relying on the chance passerby or - shudder - advertising poster to show
us the way out of our breastfeeding difficulties.  I realize that I ought to
have written 'one-to-one' or 'individual' help rather than 'in-person' and
possibly it's because I actually don't have a life outside e-mail and the
internet so to me, e-mail exchanges feel just like live contact.  How
pathetic is that?

Many of your posts have pointed up the fact that the crucial point is the
hooking up with ONE entity, be it a group discussion for mothers or a
volunteer staffing the e-mail answering service, who can then help the woman
find the resources she needs for her particular situation. Books can be
great too, but if the only books you stumble onto are Contented Little Baby
Book and BabyWise and other books emphasizing scheduling and control you
will get quite a different angle from what you'd get from reading about
attachment parenting or oxytocin.  And, as Marit Olanders hinted in her
reply to me, the local services available to many women are less than
optimal, and the help they get via e-mail may make all the difference, since
it allows them to be as close as our computers.

Correspondence between two specific people is not the same as writing a
query to a list with over 3000 subscribers, none of whom you know by name. 
There have been cases in which it was very appropriate to send a query to
Lactnet but they are few and far between.
I do a fair bit of breastfeeding guidance by e-mail, with the users of our
hospital and with mothers all over Norway who have sent e-mail queries to
the help service provided by our mother-to-mother organization.  Those of us
in the organization who also work with breastfeeding as health care
providers, get sent the queries that go beyond what a mother-to-mother
counsellor is meant to deal with. We have an excellent facilitator who
determines who should get which query and it works well. 
What I like about e-mail: the ease of going back and seeing what the history
of an exchange is; the possibility for me to reply at my convenience rather
than in the middle of the evening news or my dinner or my hour at the gym;
the possibility of writing a considered response and then editing it before
sending; the way I can include URLs to great illustrations or articles that
the woman can look at or refer her caregiver to if need be, and the way she
can send me photos of her nipple lesions or the inside of her baby's mouth
even if she lives far away from me, with no local help at all. Telemedicine
is acknowledged as a good thing, why not telesupport for breastfeeding? 

No one so far has mentioned text messaging by mobile phone as a channel for
support.  Personally it is one of my most-used modes of communication with
women, far more than phone conversations.  I can't believe I am the only one
on Lactnet who works this way. Text messaging is widely used in Norway
anyway. Don't know how many smiley faces I have sent in reply to 'Cracks
have healed, pain is finally GONE' or 'Look how big she is now' as caption
to a phone picture of a bouncing breastfed baby, or the most recent one 'He
finally pooped!' (it had been 5 days since last meconium was passed). 

Finally, I want to make clear that the listmothers have never even come
close to reprimanding anyone for posting a personal query to Lactnet. We
send general reminders about the list guidelines when the need arises.  We
assume that when someone sends out a call for help to this list, their need
is so great that whatever attention they might otherwise have had for the
guidelines, is being used to cope with the problem they are experiencing.
Often one of us will answer the query off the list too. But the volume of
e-mails it might generate if we opened Lactnet up for queries from concerned
mothers, would take our collective breath away, and it would be a far less
effective way to upgrade the quality of individual, tailored help for all women.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome