Susan, Your post was of poetry and is poetic by itself.  But I just would 
like to comment to your last paragraph,

"The mother who aches to nurse her baby is a far cry
from the woman who couldn’t be bothered or does not
know it is possible.  Better language for the
differences saves us from descriptions that may
themselves be judged judgmental."

How do we know a woman cannot be bothered to breastfeed?  And why should we 
not be compassionate towards the mother who just didn't know breastfeeding 
was possible?  Aren't these judgments and judgments based on limited 
information.

When I worked at WIC, I and the rest of the staff at WIC encouraged a 
particularly bright but young pregnant mother to breastfeed her first baby.  
She seemed very reluctant at first to make that choice but never explained 
the reluctance. The encouragement worked well and she breastfeed her baby 
with no interventions needed by myself or our staff.  About 6 weeks 
postpartum she came in wanting to change her food package to infant formula.  
She was sent to me beforehand because we didn't want to change her over to 
formula feeding.  I tried very hard to find out what was wrong.  Was she 
having problems with breastfeeding?  No.  I asked her why and the answer l 
got was a "just because I don't want to do it anymore."  How far do you press 
someone when they don't really want to talk?  The following week I read in my 
local paper that this mother was beaten by the baby's father and had to visit 
the ER for treatment.  The baby's father went to jail.  Suddenly a light bulb 
goes off in my brain.  Was her initial reluctance to not breastfeed because 
the boyfriend didn't want her to?  And was quitting breastfeeding an attempt 
at appeasing the boyfriend? I won't ever know.  But I suspect from working 
with this mother that she liked breastfeeding.  And I now feel that for some 
women in abusive relationships that one may save face by saying that you 
don't want to breastfeed or that you can't be bothered with breastfeeding.  
When in fact, there are factors in people's lives that they will never admit 
to publicly, that makes them give you such reasons for not wanting to 
breastfeed.  Why should we not believe that inside some of these mothers is 
deep regret for not breastfeeding? 

I like Jean's words of "direct" and "indirect" and would use them when I need 
to be clear to people about what exactly a mother was doing.  But you know I 
think in the heart of every woman (even our formula feeding mothers)is the 
heart of the breastfeeding woman.  We were meant to nurture our babies at the 
breast.  It is the science of infant feeding that has some of us believing 
that mothers and babies need to be separated.  It is in the interest of 
science that we need clear definitions.  I was never much of a scientist.  
Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

PS:  Susan, I have tried e-mailing you but the mail demon/daemon keeps 
booting my e-mails to you back to me. 

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