Barbara is right. Increasing Initiation rates is only half the battle. We need to work on bf duration, and of course, exclusive bf. I am pretty accurate at predicting which moms will d/c bf early, some even before they ever leave the hospital. I think most LCs who have been practicing awhile can do this. This would be a hypothesis I guess. I think High risk moms are "c/s moms" who rarely, if ever, bf in the delivery or recovery room, and usually do not bf the first evening/nite. Also mothers who have (what to us would be) minor bf challenges, but who have formula fed previous babies. Mothers who ask me "what if I just don't like it, how do I dry up the milk?" after the first feeding. Mothers who consistently give supplemental bottles even after good feeds with info/support to exclusively bf. This sounds like I'm being judgemental but most of these situations have a lot to do with institutional barriers. My quandary is that even though I can identify that these moms are high risk for weaning, how exactly do I intervene to prevent this? Obviously I am constantly trying to change the hospital culture to be baby friendly and to refer to LLL (the population of moms I work with and the docs and nurses are resistant to this). But until that happens, what can we do for the moms to keep them going? Laurie Wheeler, IBCLC, MN, RN New Orleans Louisiana, s.e. USA _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail *********************************************** 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 mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html