Carla writes:

<< if it is used to delay breastfeeding, especially if it is anything more
 than perhaps to delay while mommy makes a potty stop, in other words, if it
 is used to schedule the baby.  >>


This made me smile because I use this example often.  I've posted in other
contexts about the way that acknowledging exceptions can help persuade
sceptical listeners of how small those exceptions are (for example, babies
with galactosemia shouldn't be bf, or fully bf -- but they are one in
60,000!).

In this case, when moms-to-be ask how often they should feed if the baby
wants to feed "all the time," I say, "Well, it's a relationship, and you also
have needs.   If you have to use the bathroom, I'd say even if it really
makes the baby unhappy you are entitled to use the bathroom, and and
screaming or no, dad can just snuggle her and stick her pinky in her mouth
for 90 seconds.     But if you're just talking on the phone or filling out
the hospital forms or something, I'd say a baby's need to eat is probably
more urgent at any given moment than that stuff."

The sense for some of these mothers is that they don't have to slay
themselves to devote themselves to the baby -- they just have to think
clearly about what's most important, and that, they often feel, is more
doable.

Btw, a fund conversation this week with a female, childless, med student who
was taken aback to see Yemima, crabby and tired in the evening, go to the
breast for about 30 seconds at a time every five minutes over the course of
an hour.  She wanted to know if crying was the best way to tell whether a
baby was hungry/thirsty.   I asked her, "How thirsty would you have to be to
weep?  Or even, since a baby is less articulate than you are, how much time
would go by between your awareness of thirst and  your beginning to actively
complain if you didn't get a drink?"   You could see her get it --

Cheers, Elisheva

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