Heather writes:  "*Tell*  them it may happen,  and *celebrate* it happening
as a good sign - because there will be many people around them who will
criticise them for continuing to bf through it."

You're so right, Heather! That is exactly what I do - the parents usually
look at me aghast, as if I'm crazy! This whole line of discussion we've had
here recently has made me think a lot more about how & when the knowledge of
what it's like to parent a brand-new baby should be getting into our popular
consciousness.

I know that in high school, even middle school, they try to "teach" kids
what it's like to be responsible for a baby by having them carry around an
egg-baby, or a flour-sack-baby, or even a fancy doll that's programmed to
cry & require "feeding" at specific random points and records the "parents'
reponses. But the kids think it's a joke, or fun for a week - and besides,
they're kids and never get tired anyway.

Babies aren't dolls, as we've all noticed by now. Do you think that
new-parent shock is something that needs to be dealt with as it comes up,
because ahead of time we just "don't get it"? Or should preparation be more
life-long? Ideally, I'd say we should all be better-prepared, but I'm not
sure it works that way; I know that, with years of professional chlid-care
under my belt and a life-long love of and experience with babies, I was in
TOTAL SHOCK with my first. NOTHING could have prepared me. But open
acknowledgement and loving acceptance and reassurance that I wasn't just by
nature a bad mother  would have gone a long way towards my understanding of
mothering in those first few weeks/months.

The first thing I did outside my home after my first child was born was take
some graduate psych courses and research issues of mothering and self-image.
At the time, there wasn't anything like the body of research that we have
now, so anything that validated my own sense that turning into a standard
American mother wasn't exactly as positive as it's cracked up to be was like
a stream flowing in the desert (or dessert, if you like that image better).
That's what led me to what I do now. I work with moms and babies because I
remember with every cell in my body exactly what it was like at first.

But I wish we could find better ways of helping people know what to expect
from their babies and from themselves. Any thoughts? I really like
proceeding from a position of strength, assuming that, yes,it can be
difficult and earth-shaking, but that we and our babies are equipped to cope
with it - it's NORMAL, in other words. And it works this way for good
reasons - this seems to be the stumbling block for lots of Americans, at
least, who reject the concept that it is through these days of "trial by
fire" with our babes that we forge the bonds that keep us forever connected
to our children. That if babies just showed up like a florist's bouquet and
all we had to do was change their water a couple of times a day, the love
and strength and flexibility that binds us to each other as human beings
just wouldn't grow.

Never mind DesCartes "I think, therefore I am"; I'll go with "I cry and
sweat and get flustered when my baby seems unhappy, therefore I am".

Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC