"we NEED more than a medical model because so much of
breastfeeding is about interacting with the mother infant dyad and
assisting them to develop a healthy relationship to feeding"

I've always figured that what I do is the baby equivalent of helping a mother make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her older child:  Here are some easy ways to open the jar, there's a jam that most kids don't seem to like, here's one way to keep from tearing the bread, that's a jelly that a lot of mothers say gives their kids a rash.  Why on earth would anyone seek a hospital or clinic for that kind of help?  

Now that I think about it, maybe we need to work harder on making LCs *only* a medical model - the peanut butter equivaIent of helping the mother make a sandwich if she has MS or one arm or an infectious disease.  And at the same time work harder on turning the plain old peanut butter and jelly back over to mother support groups.  Are IBCLCs a bud off the ancient mother-support amoeba, trying to suck all the original material into ourselves instead of budding off as a separate and narrow-purpose specialty that allows the original amoeba to remain the bigger of the two? 

I wasn't headed in this direction when I started this post, but it's an interesting notion.  Why are *we* the holders of all the Just Plain Breastfeeding help?  All that does is medicalize the whole darn sandwich.  

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.normalfed.com

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