Judy Gelman wrote:

<<<but I
can't help feeling a little surprised at her characterization of the
Dutch view that women should birth naturallly and then nurse for 3
months to 6 months at most, then definitely wean by one year.  Am I
naive to be disillusioned by this "news"?  What is the experience of
others with northern European culture and breastfeeding?  I'd love to
hear.>>>

I second Anne's words that the view on Europe may be too 'rosey'. The bf
rates in the Netherlands are similar to those of the US: about 60% of
the mothers only starts with bf and the bf rates drop very fast after 3
months.

It's difficult to find a explanation for this. One of the reasons  is
that so many moms even don't start bf bc they are scared away by all the
failure stories that are told by family and friends (and magazines). and
these 'failures' are caused by the still very living tradition of
scheduling. A baby of a few weeks old is supposed to drink (breast or
bottle) 6 times a day, and soon there after 5 times a day. Baby should
sleep through the nigth after a couple of weeks. Another thing is that
nursing in public is something that you hardly see here.

Till short these schedules were strongly advised by the nurses who come
over the woman's house for 7-10 days after the (usually natural
unmedicated) delivery. They encouraged time restriction at the breast
and scheduling. Today they are big carriers of nipple shields.
Fortunately formula samples are forbidden today.

another reason for our low bf rates is the strong position of dairy
industry. We are a big milk producers (I've heard that a large portion
of Nestle's milk is produced here), and we have 2 very strong formula
producers. One of them, Nutricia, has received the label "royal" last
year :( :( :(

Nutricia is an agressive advertisers, esp among health professionals.

The ministery of education have announced they want to reorganize the
research on the universities. They want to create 7 'fields of
research', all centered around a theme, paid by government *and* by
businesses. One of these themes is... 'nutrition'. And guess who will be
a big sponsor of this  field... Nutricia! :( :(

We look jealous to the Scandinavian countries with their high bf rates.
But I've heard from Scandinavian internetfriends that the bf support
from health professonals still isn't allways good.

Maybe you could tell the mother that although it looks as if nursing a
toddler in the Netherlands is completely strange, in fact the are a lot
of women who do it. They do not show up in the tables, but they do
exist. There is a living LLL here, and also another bf organization
(VBN).

--
Annelies Bon               http://www.flnet.nl/~0bon01/bfbronnen.html
mother of Dirk 7yo, Tom 5yo, Pieter 21mo
mailto:[log in to unmask]
bf counsellor in training of the Dutch bf org "Borstvoeding Natuurlijk"