Hi all,

What a wonderful discussion has emerged from discussing bottles and language and baby's rights!
When I was pregnant with my first child, I decided to leave my paid job, finding it so important to be home with my newborn.
The question usually asked in the Netherlands is: "So you stopped working?" Personally and as a bf volunteer, I always make a point of saying: "No, I quit my paid job, but I work harder than I ever did before."
When it comes to how 'normal' (pfff... I hate the word... my girls all know that I always add that 'normal' is a relative notion...) it is to stay home with your child(ren) after unmedicated, unscheduled, natural (home) deliveries (of which I had four) and look after them yourself, we still have a long way to go. The fact that bf volunteer organisations came into being, has to do with societal questions and great confidence in what 'scientific' developments had to offer, sometimes rightly (washing machines, industrial production processes) and sometimes unrightly (formula, to stay in our own field ;o)). The value of natural mammalian behavior somehow got lost in all this and as a consequence, the art of nurturing/nourishing/breastfeeding your baby was no longer rolemodelled. Volunteers brought it back by peer counseling.
When governments create negative incentives regarding staying at home with your child, when looking after your own children is viewed as 'not working' (although doing the same in child care for someone else's child IS considered 'working') and as not making an important contribution to society's future, and when financial situations 'force' mothers to earn a living outside their homes, it is hard for them to have it all and give it all.
I've come to realize that I was fortunate to be able to stay at home because my husband earned enough money to sustain the whole family, and sustain it well, too. I think I would have made the same choice, had he earned less, but that's easy to say now, as I haven't been in that situation.
So, how to 'protect, promote and support' breastfeeding for those women who either have (feel...?!) a financial necessity to go back to their (paid) jobs outside the home or do not see fulltime mothering for at least a couple of years as a worthy, important investment in their children as well as society as a whole?
Funny enough and I can hardly believe myself saying this, I found that for me, as a bf volunteer it was easier to be a 'hard liner' (sorry for polarizing, not meant like that) than as a (almost) lactation consultant. Lc's, of course, have an obligation to be true bf advocates. (Wow, how proud I always was never to have any formula in my trolley in the supermarket!) At the same time, they also have to be bf-politicians. We have to find a way to get our message across, persuade those who are not easily persuaded, remain on speaking terms with hospital and child care managers, in order to get their policies changed and improved. Being empathetic is something we not only have to be towards mothers. We have to develop it towards managers and the general public as well. We can and should remain truthful to our evidence based opinions (re feeding as well as nurturing/nourishing, the process as well as the product) and still try to take a view from the perspective of those who are not as well informed as we are or are not as free as we are to spend their working hours as dedicated to breastfeeding as we do. I for one can often hardly understand why women/parents don't opt for exclusive at-breastfeeding, and still they do make different choices. How can I stay in touch with them and not lose credibility? How can I overcome my sadness for the baby, when I see that his parents think he's just as well of with the product as with the process? Of course he's not! But how can I make myself heard with my ideas about all that, without putting pressure on the parents? And on a broader level: how can we make society turn around and return to the bf-process, recognizing its irreplacable value, without looking inflexible as a profession?
Pam brings in good points and the Code can certainly help. Still, I think the problem is much bigger than that and if we agree that breastfeeding is to a great extent about the process, the Code is not the only solution. Good bf statistics is also about women ánd men valuing gender characteristics, about not constantly speeding up life's pace, about not seeing relationships between men and women and between parents and children as a matter of 'who's most powerful, who's the best'. It is about the question: "How can you and your talents flourish? How can your psychological and physical potential be realised? How, my child, can you be who you were meant to be when you were born, recovering your breath skin to skin at breast, in the safety of your mother's arms?" And to add another problem: "How can I be the mother/parent to my child, with the patience and the presence that I would have wished for me, when I was that age? How can I mourn for what I lost or missed, in order not to withhold from my child what he's entitled to?"
The Code can't solve all that, given the fact that personal development as a child ànd as an adult is not about marketing, but about psychology. With a deep, internalised, well rolemodelled and enacted conviction that babies BELONG at breast and that mothers BELONG with their babies, we wouldn't even need a Code...! (Yeah, call me naive! hahaha)
The Germans call breastfeeding 'stillen'. I love that word: you offer your baby the breast and it is silent, calm, quiet. It puts him at ease and takes away whatever was uncomfortable to him.
That is why I became involved in the 'breastfeeding business', to develop competencies that help me to share what I gave and was given while breastfeeding, despite periodic exhaustion: sheer joy and wonder.

Warm regards,

Marianne Vanderveen,
VBN-volunteer in the North of the Netherlands and IBCLC 2008 (and not very available for her children, whilst reading all Lactnet-postings! ;-))

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