Dear all:

I had one of those phone calls today that fell into my three most difficult conversations 
with a "potential" client ever.  One of those three I'm happy to report actually amazingly 
came to back to me for her second baby and now thinks I walk on water.  However,  I 
cannot even begin to tell you how horrible my experience was the first time around.  She 
had the benefit of oxytocin amnesia for which I am grateful and she's still nursing her 
second baby well into the second year of life.

Today's phone call was a vortex of spiraling into the black hole of negativity with each 
and every suggestion met with further and further reasons why everything was 
impossible.  The movie I have watched in the Museum of Natural History on black holes 
where you hit some point of no return kept flashing through my mind as I was sucked 
into the coversation and couldn't manage to extricate myself.  I basically told her if she 
decided she did want evidence-based advice she could call back instead of saying what 
crossed my mind which was "why did you ever decide to have a child anyway?"

She had gone through sleepless nights of engorgement because she wasn't draining her 
breasts in a futile attempt to get some rest and now is on the downswing from many 
nights of 8+ hours of no drainage.  But... of course even drinking water and pumping 
when she needed to pee was simply too much (and heaven forbid that she actually feed 
her baby at night).

In response to my counter-transference reaction to this event, my dear psychoanalytic 
husband has now thought of a means of stimulating our US economy for a job that cannot 
be outsourced to another country.  He remembered me talking about an LC who has a 
husband who grew up as the son of a midwife in a country in Africa where infants, 
toddlers and small children are the "pump" that alleviates engorgement.  This husband of 
an LC remembered alleviating engorgement for the mothers that his mother saw in the 
early postpartum period.  So, on the basis of this story my husband decided that maybe 
enemployed men in the US could be hired for the lazy mom's pump --- train them to be 
breast nurses (as opposed to baby nurses).  They could drain the breast when a mom 
feels that she cannot get up to drain the breast with the baby or the pump!  Mom need 
never get out of bed to pick up a baby or put breast shields on.  In fact, she might not 
even need to wake up at all.  They would just drain the breast at regular intervals during 
the night while she slept so she wouldn't get engorged, her baby could receive formula so 
it would sleep longer at night (since Andrea Peyser of the NY Post and Nora Ephrom 
believe all that research on breastfeeding is made up anyway) and they could awake 
refreshed in the morning ready to feed their babies.

Just imagine, it could be one better than Chippendale's or pet nurses (a genetically 
engineered pet that would nurse your baby with human milk as I have previously written 
about)!

Feel free to flame me --- I've been charred and roasted to a crispy pile of ashes today 
already.  

Best, Susan Burger

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