<I truly believe that breastfeeding rates would increase dramatically if all women had a lactation consultant the same way they have a midwife or a doctor when they are pregnant.>

I'd like to suggest a slightly different tack, which Karyn-grace alluded to in her message:

When I was pregnant, no one mentioned La Leche League (the most common mother-to-mother support group around here).  Well, yes, my sister the childbirth educator did.  "Stay away from those La Lesh people," she told me nearly 30 years ago.  "They're fanatics."  

As a result, in my first 6 weeks of motherhood I took my baby for walks in a stroller (over a gravel road), used a stopwatch to time feeds, encouraged a pacifier and a blankie, woke him for visitors, tried desperately to get him to sleep away from us, tried to give him a mutually-hated daily bath, and fretted over ever squeak he made.  It took me a full year to understand that LLL was about more than breastfeeding - it was about mothering a breastfed baby.  As is every mother-to-mother breastfeeding support group.  And I suspect that what we *really* need to keep us going past the early months is... role models.  People we can watch in action answering questions we don't even know we have.

Michael Woolridge spoke once about a hospital that did everything wrong with mothers and babies.  The breastfeeding rate a month or so post-discharge?  In the high nineties.  It was a badly Westernized hospital *within a breastfeeding culture*, and mothers simply went home and... made it work.  Just like all their friends.  

The learning that goes on at a mother-to-mother meeting is way beyond what I could possibly cover as a woman's personal (and apparently childless) LC.  She wouldn't even know to ask the questions, and I'd never understand that *this* mother needs to hear about blankies while *that* mother needs to hear about alternatives to standard slings.  I love to see the occasional non-pregnant woman who comes to a meeting along with a pregnant friend.  Had I had just one dose of watching normal mothers and babies interacting, I'd have spared myself so much uncertainty later on!  The kind of uncertainty that, I'm sure, pushes many mothers into bottles.

I think of my LC role as, say, the dentist and my LLL role as more of a dental hygienist.  Which one would you rather have in case you need a root canal?   But how much expertise do you need to pay for to learn how to floss your teeth?  

If even one Health Care Professional had urged me to go to a meeting, I'd have gone, because I knew that they are The Ones Who Know.  But no one did.  So I saw it not only as optional but suspect.  If it were important, surely they'd bring it up.  I didn't really start going until *after* my son and I had weathered a nursing strike with LLL's help.  

Sure, let's make sure every woman has an LC for her "root canals".  But let's also make very, very sure that she also has a whole cadre of peers who can show her the many ways to "floss."   And let's tell her why it's so important that she go :-)

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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

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