>How about breastfeeding drop-in centres, well-baby clinics and a LC
contact for every single mother who has a new baby?<

As long as we are taking breastfeeding out of the medical setting of the
hospital, how about remembering to be very careful not to make LCs into the new
medical profession with the ownership of breastfeeding knowledge?

Pat Hoddinott in her MA thesis, based on her work with women in the East End of
London (see also her article in the Jan 1999 BMJ) suggests antenatal
apprenticeships for women with others of their community who are breastfeeding
as a more productive way forward that increased activity by health
professionals.  She also talks about women valuing the real and practical
experience of health professionals, when they do offer this, rather than the
theoretical or formal.

When we reclaim breastfeeding knowledge on behalf of women we have to remember
not to take it away from where it is now and forget to hand it on.  As lay
breastfeeding supporters one of our explicit aims has always been to ultimately
do ourselves out of a job, because we are working for  breastfeeding knowledge
to become re-embedded back in the embodied discourse of everywoman.

Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter, BfN , UK

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