I SO, SO agree with you.  I am looking at it from a slightly different
point of view.  I have an 8 1/2 month old daughter, who will celebrate
her first Christmas this year, and her first birthday in February.  No
doubt she will get baby dolls as gifts.  And we all know what comes with
98% of the baby dolls... BOTTLES!!!  Even if I ask, I know people will
still buy her dolls with bottles.  And, the bottles are going in the
trash with the packaging.  I do not want my daughter to grow up thinking
bottles are how babies are fed.  I do not want to perpetuate ill health
in my family.  I personally will go to great pains to find dolls without
bottles, but I know most other people in my family will not.  I do not
have any qualms about pitching them. 

I am not anti-bottle.  A bottle can be a useful tool when a mother's
BREAST is not available, for whatever reason.  But, I do not want her to
think it's the norm.  Babies nurse, and she's got her own breasts and
can pretend to nurse her baby dolls all she wants, and I will encourage
it.  How else will she know it's normal without modeling?  And I will
not hesitate to educate the rest of the family when they see her do it. 
Nobody will make her feel ashamed of her body or what its parts are
supposed to do.  She won't have to fight our culture, at least not as
hard... she will at least have the confidence to feed her baby in a
NORMAL fashion and I hope society changes a little bit more in a
positive direction by the time she is a mother herself.

Liz Cammin, RN, LLLL

-- 
I didn't give you the gift of life.  Life gave me the gift of you.

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

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