Rachel,  You wrote:
"I use this now to illustrate how *important* breastfeeding is, since it
seems to hit us so squarely where we live, regardless of what our own
personal experience was.  It took me about 10 years of distressing
conversations with my colleagues to see it this way.  It wasn't until the
day one of my colleagues started yelling at me 'You think it's all so easy,
well it's NOT, and I breastfed for a MONTH and never had more than an ounce
of milk, and it was REALLY HARD...' and then started to cry, that I came to
my current realization.  What made it all the more convincing was that the
baby she breastfed is now a man of 40, she is retired, and recalling her
experience can still reduce her to a quivering mass.  Do we need stronger
arguments for why women deserve good help to succeed at breastfeeding?
Wouldn't the world be better without all this anguish?"

I am impressed by your observation Rachel and think that this anquish goes
unrecognized by our society.  The loss of breastfeeding is full of pain and
bitterness.  It is not often understood by those who made breastfeeding work
for them or had very little difficulties in breastfeeding.  I say this
because I quit breastfeeding my first baby at 11 days postpartum and remember
the emotional pain quite clearly.  I  fully relactated 2 months later and
that painful memory was mostly blotted out in the happiness of getting back
what I had lost.

But our culture does not recognize the profound loss women feel when they
can't make breastfeeding work for them.  It hits you in the gut.  In fact I
can say that I couldn't look at other breastfeeding women during that time
without feeling very bitter.  I shed alot of private tears and felt very
alone in my pain.  What happens when breastfeeding doesn't work out is either
people say to you: "that it doesn't matter, formula is just as good, etc."
or behind your back they say: "well she mustn't have really wanted to do it
since she gave it up so easily."  Either statement lacks the understanding of
what someone might have gone through in trying to make it work and the amount
of loss a woman feels when breastfeeding doesn't work out for her.
So Rachel it is not surprising to me that this woman still felt that grief,
that loss as strongly 40 years later.  Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

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