Pamela wrote:

<<<I am beginning not to "buy" having a possible history of sexual abuse as a
socially acceptable "reason" for a mother not to breastfeed.  I know that a
history of abuse sometimes appears to cause a mother to want to distance
herself from her baby - in our civilized Western culture - but I'm beginning
to wonder if it is the *culture* rather than the *abuse* per se which
provides the Western survivor with one more reason not to breastfeed.  And I
always wonder to myself how these women came to be pregnant in the first
place - the mothers who "don't want to breastfeed" that I work with are
*not* recent rape victims, and they usually seem to have loving, concerned
husbands around which leads me to believe that they are not averse to sex,
just breastfeeding. >>>

This reminds me of a phrase the local LC often uses: "The breasts are
allways wrong! The breasts did it!". Note she doesn't say breast*feeding*,
but breasts. And I think she makes a very good observation with this.

She told me a terrible story about a very sick women, from a middel east
country, who came out of coma after HELLP, and expressed her wishes to
breastfeed, and how every HCP in the hospital tried to sabotage that. How
her husband pumped her breasts (since she was partly paralyzed), how the
peds forbid her to give the milk to the baby bc of some drugs (probably
unnecesary). How the LC tried to help her to relactate, and how this caused
an uproar. She told me: 'they reacted as I was doing an act of sexual
abvuse" . They wanted to force the mother to go to a revalidation hospital,
but the mother refused. She went home leaving everyone upset, bc "she will
kill her child by rolling over it or dropping it". Her MIL would be at her
home to help her....

Annelies Bon
Breastfeeding Resources http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/abon/bfbronnen.html
breastfeeding counsellor of the Dutch bf org "Borstvoeding Natuurlijk"
mailto:[log in to unmask]
living in a small city, Almere, near Amsterdam, The Netherlands