As a hopeful IBCLC who has been a peer counselor for almost 9 years 
(yikes), I have been reading these posts carefully to learn as much as I 
can about different areas of practice (hospital, private, WIC) and 
different philosophies. It is very frustrating when it seems as though a a 
mother has gotten bad advice. But there is one other variable to consider--
 the mother and her family. Sometimes the mother has interpreted something 
that was said completely differently than the way it was intended. For 
instance, if a nurse comes in and says to nurse the baby "at least every 
two hours", this can be interpreted very differently depending on the 
knowledge and intention of the mother. One may take this to mean that she 
shouldn't nurse until at least two hours have elapsed since the last 
feeding and will hold the baby off despite the baby's obvious rooting and 
cues, while another may take this to mean that she has to wake her baby 
every two hours (regardless of his feeding cues and health) to "make him 
take the breast" and experiences the frustration of trying to latch an 
unwilling baby.  Also, with the plethora of resources bombarding new 
parents, many self-diagnose. They won't report sore nipples because they 
have read that breastfeeding is supposed to hurt at first. They may assume 
that latch is supposed to hurt and that, coupled with a quick visual by a 
busy practitioner who sees good positioning, tell the next person that 
they are "fine" when asked. Mother's expectations factored in with busy 
and fallible humans can be another reason why poor latch is mis-diagnosed 
or missed entirely. Also, some mothers have been conditioned to listen to 
medical personnel over trusting their own bodies, and we all know that 
women with breastfeeding difficulties are notorious for not asking for 
help soon enough. I am sorry this is so long, I just wanted to express 
another point of view. We are all passionate about breastfeeding and all 
frustrated when a mother and baby suffer setbacks or wean unnecessarily.

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html