Last year's lactnet responses to "why did you decide to breastfeed"
surprised me.  To see if they really said what I thought they did, I went
thru the archives and collected 39 of the stories (I understand there were
more;  that's all I could find).  I broke them into the following
categories:

I was part of a breastfeeding mini-culture

I did it for my baby's health

I had one or more compelling role models

I wanted to follow my mother's example

I had some other "selfish" reason (weight loss or ease, for instance)

Other (more than one reason was given without saying which was more
important, or perhaps someone just told the writer to bf)

I discounted the 6 Mini-culture responses, because I felt those women
weren't making a decision;  they were simply following what they perceived
to be their cultural norm - something we hope all women will be doing
someday, at which point their reasons won't matter.  That left me with 33
responses:

Baby's health  7 (21%)

Role model     9 (27%)

Mother         6 (18%)

Other selfish  3 (9%)

Other          8 (24%)

If you group "role model","mother", and "other selfish" as all being women
who wanted something for *themselves*, you end up with roughly a quarter
deciding for baby's health, a quarter for "other", and *half* (54%) for
selfish reasons.

The way in which writers elaborated was interesting.  Those who decided for
baby's health, "decided to give it a try" or were "determined to do it for
6 months" - tentative or martyr-ish statements - while those who had a role
model said things like " I just *knew* that was what I wanted do" -
statements with a lot more strength and enthusiasm.

When I talked about these results w/ some other LCs, Natalie Shenk
suggested that maybe *after* we're bfing successfully, we get smug about
all the wonderful things we're doing for our baby and want to tell people
about them, forgetting that those really aren't the reasons we decided to
bf in the first place.

I asked for a show of hands at a recent conference, and it looked like
maybe a 50-50 breakdown between baby's health and selfishness.  Not as
dramatic, but still not reflecting the way most of us try to sell bfing.

Do we need to work on our sales pitch?

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY