Jennifer T.'s post about 'just give up' made me laugh, in spite of myself.
It is pretty awful.
A public health nurse here did a study a few years back into womens'
experience of being 'pressured' to breastfeed.  She found that women were
very persistent and very bothered when breastfeeding didn't work out, and
that they found it universally unhelpful to be told all the advantages of
continuing to breastfeed and the risks of not doing so, while getting no
meaningful help with their very real breastfeeding problems.  I would think
'just keep trying' is about as meaningless as it gets.  In that context,
'just give up' seems almost kinder, in a warped way, especially when there
may not be anyone who can provide the help.

I think we often run into that in Norway, where breastfeeding is normal, so
normal that we don't have an adequate network of BF experts for the
difficult cases.  Where everyone breastfeeds, the level of knowledge about
normal breastfeeding is good, but there aren't enough people to help with
the complicated problems.

It is even worse if the help is limited to 'just keep trying/just give up'
in settings where the help is available but not used, as Jennifer describes.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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