<< I have heard that some women who are well educated, preofessional women
 can tend to have problems with breastfeeding because they are used to
 having control of their lives and the adjustment to 'going with the
 flow' so to speak is difficult for them. Has anyone else ever heard =
 this? >>

>I do not know any evidence to support it.   In the United States, at least
>according to the Ross statistics, mothers who are older, professional, and
>highly educated are all MORE likely to initiate bf and MORE likely to be
>nursing at 6 months.

For my part, "likely to be nursing at 6 months" is too low a bar these days.
 I work w/ a lot of women who never quite get the notion that this is a
relationship.  They persist in using breastfeeding only as a food source,
and their babies tend to "wean themselves" - to their mothers' surprise and
even veiled relief - by a year, or at least are down to one or two nursings
a day by that time.  I don't link it to any career-related personality - at
least as many are stay-at-home-moms as not - but to a culturally-encouraged
attitude that simply gets in the way of an easy-going relationship.

My own gauge of a really successful (okay, we can quibble about *that* word,
too!) bfing relationship is one that peters out roughly within Kathy
Dettwyler's "weaning window" - that is, one in which there were no pressures
brought to bear on the child that prevented him from *wanting* to continue
to a biologically normal age.

If we keep using 6 months as a measure of bfing success, I think we may get
where we want to go more slowly because it'll take that much longer to spot
the problems in certain approaches.  Mothers can use any of many bfing
styles (even Ezzo) for 6 months and the baby will put up with it because
it's his food source and he has no choice.  But once he has other foods, if
the mom's approach has been too controlling, he'll sidestep into solids and
get out from under the burden of having to negotiate for nursings.  Let's
raise the bar to at least a year:  are there bfing styles that tend to get
in the way of nursing for a year?  I think there are.  I got calls from two
such mothers last week.  Both planned to nurse for a year, both are down to
2-3 Feedings per day at 8 or 9 months, one of the babies refuses to nurse
more often.

This, to me, is Breast Feeding, not nursing, and while it's far, far better
than most of the US manages, I feel bad for mother and baby because I know
what they're both going to miss and I know how close they came to having it.
  It may be all a particular mother wants - it may meet *her* goal for
success - but as a cultural model I don't consider it successful and I want
the culture to weed out recommendations that lead to it.  I'm for raising
the bar.

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

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