The way I look at it is that infant feeding only became a medical 
issue once it entered the medical arena, with doctors devising 
individual formulas for their patients, with 
doctors/hospitals/para-medical professionals like midwives and nurses 
deciding how often a baby should feed and for how long, and with 
doctors/hospitals/para-profs laying down  the law about co-sleeping 
and so on. Alongside the promotion of commercial formula, this 
interference messed breastfeeding up.

When it was simply something that women did as part of normal, 
everyday caring for their babies, it wasn't anything like as 
problematic as it is today (in most western countries, that is).

Normal, physiological, responsive infant feeding is no more a medical 
issue *per se* than breathing.

But it's too late to expect to go back to those days without at least 
some help and support from all the professionals a mother comes into 
contact with, including doctors....and then if we return to those 
days, it will cease to be a medical issue except when it goes wrong 
(as in, for example, breathing).

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK

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