Just got home from my ward's Christmas party where I got to visit and catch up with one of my colleagues who is still on leave after having her first baby just over 8 months ago. She struggled in the beginning with slow weight gain as well as long term nipple soreness accompanied by very painful Raynaud's phenomenon, and we were in close touch to begin with as I helped her treat the soreness and the Raynaud's and reassured her that her baby wasn't undernourished, he is just one of those outliers on the charts, way too long for his weight from the first few weeks on out. He grows long quickly and gains weight less quickly. Could have something to do with his having very tall, thinnish parents, doh. She stopped calling or writing by the summer and she lives far enough away that I don't run into her outside of work either so I didn't know what had happened later. She looks terrific now, and happy, and said she had meant to write dozens of times but just never got around to it, because she wanted me to know that she is deeply enjoying breastfeeding and is very satisfied that she persisted until her soreness and pain resolved. She did add that she was unprepared for how much work it had been, but she feels unequivocally that it was worth every bit of it for the rewards they are experiencing now, of which the most important one to her is that she gets to cuddle him and nurture him multiple times every day. He doesn't get any other milk but hers, and is eating solids like a typical Norwegian 8 month old. As far as not being prepared for how much work it was, I don't think any pregnant woman should be told to prepare for an experience like this mother's - the pain finally stopped at about six months, and for the most of that time she was feeding her baby for up to an hour at a time, frequently with one hour between end of one feed and start of the next. He was not an ineffective nurser, he just needed frequent feeds to be satisfied. She is confident that she will have an easier time with her next child, and if she runs into problems she feels sure that she will be able to solve them quicker. Aside from the pain, her major stressor was all the people around her offering free, unsolicited advice on how to get him to gain faster while warning her that the frequent feeds would spoil him and make it impossible for him ever to cope without her. I gave her my take on that, which is that a newborn only wants what it needs and it is perfectly responsible and appropriate to give the newborn just that, and that they will move on to more independence when the time is right. Luckily for my reputation he is doing that, and luckily for this family, the father honors and respects the baby's need to be breastfed and the mother's need to breastfeed, so she had a very important ally in her efforts to resist the influence of the chorus telling her to supplement with commercial milk products. All of this really underscores for me the importance of a system of support for breastfeeding that makes it possible for mothers with significant obstacles in their way, to continue just a bit longer while things work themselves out. My colleague's husband had said to her when the baby was a couple of months old and she was desperate for things to improve 'but you'll breastfeed at least until Christmas, surely?' and she thought to herself she would never survive that. I was still hearing from her every couple of weeks at that time. Now Christmas is upon us and she can't imagine stopping. I think if she wasn't a midwife and a very determined person besides, she would have needed a lot more support from me than she got, but I don't know if I could have eased her way in any practical sense. That's not always the point. Sometimes the point is just that you are there, and you are the only one acknowledging how much it means to HER to be able to breastfeed, and the only one offering her support for keeping going. She knows someone who experienced some of the same problems, didn't get adequate help, and weaned her baby to formula after a couple of months because she saw no way out of the pain and distress on her own otherwise, and it is the contrast between how her days look now, compared to her acquaintance's days with her bottle fed child, which really makes her most grateful that she is breastfeeding. Rachel Myr Kristiansand, Norway *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET email list is powered by LISTSERV (R). There is only one LISTSERV. To learn more, visit: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html