And what I would like to see is an examination of hcps and their attitudes
towards breastfeeding, and how it affects and contaminates their practice
when it comes to breastfeeding.

I believe that the personal experiences, misperceptions, and
unsubstantiated biases that hcps have re:  parenting and breastfeeding,
coupled with the huge megacorporation bs that comes streaming out of the
formula companies and into their heads (and pockets, clipboards, pens,
cups, vacation trips to the ski resort, etc)  contribute to the most
serious, largest, devastating  and most preventable epidemic of
breastfeeding failure that this world has ever seen.

I currently help a substantial number of mothers monthly. Like between
500-600 every month.

Women are fed a line of garbage about breastfeeding on a steady diet. They
largely still receive very little, if any, ongoing support for
breastfeeding, either professionally or culturally. If they are unlucky
enough to have a baby who is hospitalized for any length of time and left
to the devices of most hospitals, most will need divine intervention to be
breastfeeding on discharge.

Let's face it folks. Breastfeeding is the easiest thing to support, if you
have support and accurate information.  Breastfeeding, however, is a
loaded, personalized, and angst ridden issue for most people, and that
includes nurses and doctors alike. It  is a women's issue...women being
split and torn between having work and having a baby. (*this is where I
laugh when we call other people third world. Women in other cultures work
with their babies with them* Whose calling who what?*)...

It's no wonder that in general, hcps cannot support breastfeeding to save
even their own lives or the lives of their own children.

HOLY COW-- I'm getting off this computer.

Kathleen

Kathleen B. Bruce, BSN, IBCLC co-owner Lactnet
Independent Consultant
http://homepages.together.net/~kbruce/kbblact.html
LACTNET Archives http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/lactnet.html

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