Dear Friends:
    More thoughts on the threads about bed sharing, touch, and breastfeeding.
As a childbirth educator/lactation consultant/infant massage
instructor/cranio-sacral therapist, I recommend and encourage all these
activities. Frequently, in a class, someone will say "Well, my sister took
her baby to bed with her and now the baby is 9 months old and won't sleep in
her own crib" or "My girlfriend breastfed and her baby was sick". I am sure
you all have heard these things, which do present challenges in a class. I
feel stunned or stopped sometimes, because the speaker is usually vehement
that the activity (the one I am recommending) was the cause of the problem
and my first response is to feel defensive.
    Maybe the big issue here is the expectation that there is someway to make
parenting easy, that if one breastfeeds, co-sleeps, practices attachment
parenting, that all will be easy and fine.  So bottle-feeding, using plastic
trays and making babies sleep alone are seen as ways to make parenting
easier.
    Don't you all think that we need to be teaching about the bigger picture,
that parenting is wonderful and terrible, joyful and painful, and that there
is no easy way? That parenting is a helluva lot of hard work that takes time
and sweat and tears, not to mention copious doses of all the other body
excretions? That there are no guarantees? Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan
were breastfed too, along with Jesus and Buddha and Ramana.
    Sometimes an analogy helps in a class. Ask the class  if wearing a seat
belt is a guarantee of survival in a car crash. Someone will say that it
isn't. Of course it isn't; but one's odds go up a whole lot if they do wear
the seat belt. Safe bed-sharing, breastfeeding, and attachment parenting are
all like seat-belts. Sure, one can survive without them, but the odds of a
healthier life sure do go way down! Warmly, Nikki Lee

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