Morgan wrote:
>Most problems are easily solved, and support given, via the internet.
The problem is when the baby and mother need to see someone, to watch
and observe, to find out what is happening, or to plough through the
tiredness and worry to find out what the actual question/problem is.
Good online support will urge mothers in this position to phone a help
line, and contact a person if at all possible.<

Offering online support is very different to actually seeing a mother
and all that a consultation involves. While some questions are easy to
answer by email, others are not. For example, almost all latch
problems really do need to be observed in person.  Knowing when to
refer for an in-person consult is an essential skill for those doing
online support.

Unless a breastfeeding forum is moderated by a trained and experienced
breastfeeding counsellor - like the ones run by La Leche League  - the
quality of information will vary widely.

Some of the mothers, on both the informal fora and those run by
breastfeeding organisations, have taken a great deal of time and
effort to educate themselves about effective breastfeeding management.
They can quote chapter and verse from established texts and give
references to share with health care professionals. The quality of the
information they share is at least on a par with that offered by
trained counsellors.

However, it is the nature of the beast that the vast majority of
mothers who participate in online fora have had no training and speak
only from their own experiences. They have no counselling skills, and
often pounce on the perceived concern instead of trying to ascertain
the actual problem. More importantly, they do not know what they do
not know.

This is also the case with the mothers who come seeking answers. They
do not know what is relevant to their case and so they do not mention
it in their posts. It takes a skilled counsellor to winkle out these
snippets of information.

The real trouble comes when you get a mother asking questions, without
sharing all the relevant information, paired with a mother who answers
her with incomplete or inaccurate information. The questioner has
absolutely no guarantees about the quality of the information she is
getting.

This is much more likely to happen on some sites than others. Yahoo
Answers, for example, is a poor place to find good breastfeeding
support, while LiveJournal's Breastfeeding Community is a pretty good
one.

We also need to differentiate between websites which offer *straight*
information, like the LLLI Answer Pages,  the mother-to-mother fora
and individualised services like  LLL Help Forms (email)  and LLL
Telephone Assistance.  (Other breastfeeding organisations also offer
similar services, and I only mention LLL because that is the one with
which I am most familiar.)  My point is that there is a place for all
of these reaching-out efforts and they are all useful in various
circumstances.


Morgan wrote:
>In an ideal world, yes, all women should have the option of one to one personal contact as support.  Not all have, and not all can take it up even if they do. <

Right, and this is one of the failings of our society. We do not take
adequate care of our most vulnerable citizens. We do not recognise the
right of every baby to nurse at his own mother's breast. We do not
value the work that mothers do in raising the next generation.
I cannot help but wonder if this is a reflection of the value we put
on the human population as a whole.


norma

Norma Ritter, IBCLC, RLC
[log in to unmask]
www.NormaRitter.com

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

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