Good morning dear people:
  This is in response to Jessica's recent post wondering how to deal with
family or friends who reject wonderful information and go off on their own
course. I have been dealing with this issue for a long time , as both a
childbirth educator and as a LC. I have gotten in trouble for being too
attached to outcomes, for hoping that if I just taught right enough and strong
enough and showed enough research that I could affect the outcome in the way
that I wanted and knew was best, i.e. the mother would have an unmedicated
delivery and breastfeed for years.
   Forget it!
   Change is so hard. And my intention, because I felt that I could make
change happen, probably made people more resistive.  So much of my practice as
a LC and cranio-sacral therapist is centered on resolving damage that could
have been lessened, if not avoided. I have felt almost like a crusader, in my
passion to effect change. Yet it hasn't worked, but rather has boomeranged.
The hardest one to change is me.
    Every mother is doing the best that she can, for reasons that may or may
not be conscious. Example, a woman I know breastfed because she was abused as
a child and was determined to mother differently, not because she knew or
cared about all the benefits of breastfeeding. We, as health care
professionals, are temporary people (walk-ins in a movie)  in a crisis time in
a woman's life. We can not overcome years of cultural conditioning on an
individual basis. So my challenge is to encourage the mother to learn about
herself, to try and create a safe environment where she can explore her
options, and at the same time, not be attached to the outcome. The only thing
I could really do I did: which was have unmedicated births and breastfeed for
years. There is no way I can create that situation for someone else. Hopefully
she will take in some of what I present, and then go her own way. If I have
done my job well, she will at least have a friend or a support network to
contact after the delivery so that she may continue to learn and be
encouraged.
    We are not responsible for the choices of another. Dealing with this is an
enormous task, both as a parent and as a professional.  I haven't always done
very well. So watching my friend starve her screaming baby, because the doctor
and her mother the pediatric nurse said that he only needed to breastfeed
every two hours and not one minute before, was awful. I stayed away for a
while. I had done my best. What else can we do? Warmly, Nikki