Jennifer Tow said:
"This is where I also have a distaste for "meeting the mother where she 
is". What about meeting the baby where she is? The baby is , 
biologically-speaking, always prepared to feed at the breast. So, why 
is it our duty to force the baby to submit to the mother's will, rather 
than advocate for the baby?"

Sometimes when I begin a discussion with a mom, I ask her what her plan was for feeding her baby. She looks at me blankly. So I ask specifically, "Do you want to breastfeed, or formula feed, or both?" Usually she says she wants "both". Then I ask why. She stares at me blankly. I ask again, "Why do you want to feed both breast and formula?"
Common answers are, because she doesn't have enough milk (Day 1, Day 2), or she has to go to work / school. That leads us into relevant discussions.
Point is, she has not really "planned" or thought "why". She just DOES what she sees everyone else doing, or what she sees in magazines or baby-supply stores, or repeats what she did with the previous child. Then again, most of the moms at my hospital are very low income. Life controls them and they just react, mostly. They don't control their lives, or are just beginning to grasp the concept of making their own decisions. That's a lot to tackle in my 30-60 minutes' LC visit.
Then she gets that wonderful marketing bag to help her through those first days at home.

Phyllis
"The hurrier I go, the behinder I get."
(Who said that? Pogo?)

--
Phyllis Adamson, IBCLC, RLC
Glendale, AZ.
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