hey all,
we also received our version of the report of the Norwegian study in the Israeli press. It was very small, reporting basically the outcome which we all agree is very positive.
Next to the small report - came the pros and cons. 

the pros, interviewed our bf friendly member of Parliament who stated that "THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR BREASTMILK". and went on to state the necessity for promotion and encouragement of BF. 

The con - came from the Chairperson of NA'AMAT which is the national Organization of Working and Volunteer Women. She states that in her opinion those standing behind these research projects are those who are interested in seeing the woman in her traditional role as mother (what's wrong with that? es), wife (so why did they get married if they don't want to be a wife??es) and a homebody (exact translation was home sitter - like have you ever seen a fulltime mom "sit" for any period of time at home???es), who does not go out to work. (this is true, cause most of the work is at home!! es) She goes on to state that "we are for the right to choose: every woman can decide if she wants to breastfeed or not. (we are in total agreement here es) One has to remember that there are other foods besides breastfeeding (should have written in article breastmilk) and breastfeeding isn't necessarily a must. ("must"  not being a good translation of the Hebrew but for lack of a better word)"

The MP (Tamar Gozinsky) is pushing new legislation here in Israel to get commercial companies out of our government institutions and Na'amat (same person) has obviously negated this even though the law in no ways compromises the right of a mom to choose another method. BUT once again, these women are so threatened!! I wrote a letter to Na'amat even before seeing todays article and will meet with her to convince her that we are on the same side of the fence. Why on earth would a baby feeding method come between  ideologies and protecting women's rights in the workplace. She seems to be just totally uninformed and I hope to get us to work together - for all women regardless of feeding choice.

So, there went another whole day dedicated to writing letters and advising all our LLLLs and IBCLCs of what is going on while also trying to get things moving!!!  I swore I would not get involved in this aspect.
It gets my blood rushing to my head. I am getting too old for this!!

Ellen Shein, IBCLC, Tel Aviv

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