Cindy says: Giving people good information is all you can do.

So true!  I had a mother recently who contacted me about phasing out
formula. She called me many times over the next few days and it seemed to
me that she was unable/unwilling to put the baby to the breast often (or
even at all) or even to pump, though she was still adamant she wanted to
bf. We made a time when she would phone again. This time came and went, and
a couple of days after it I called her...concerned for all sorts of
reasons. She then said I was pressurising her to breastfeed.....

Ahem! What???

I think it can feel like pressure, no matter how gentle we are. Sometimes,
incredible as it may seem, mothers want to bf, but they want us to tell
them a way of doing it that doesn't involve putting the baby to the breast,
or adjusting their lives to allow them to do it often enough. They would
like to bf on Tuesday afternoons, and then not on Thursdays when they want
to do something else, and on Mondays if it's raining, but not on weekends
when their mum wants to look after the baby...and not at night, ever.

I am not being critical of mothers at all. They really don't know what we
know - and maybe take for granted -  and it isn't their fault! There are
all sorts of pressures on mothers to make them feel that true 'normal' bf
is impossibly difficult and unreasonable.

When we try to explain ever so nicely that it won't work if you try to do
it like that, it's a revelation. And when they don't like the message, they
shoot the messenger.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK