Laurie -

That mother who's left to her own devices when she says breastfeeding is
going fine could have been me!  I'm one of those people who has only
s-l-o-w-l-y over many years managed to peel away a few layers of cultural
idiocy.  I gave my baby water in the hospital because the nurses told me to,
only stopping because it was boring and seemed silly.  I had my baby in a
beautiful separate bedroom at home, only gradually stopping over a period of
a couple years.  I brought formula home, and didn't use it only because I
had no particular reason to.  I *forgot* to insist that my baby be with me
for the first hour post-birth, and made phone calls instead.  I was easily
led by the cultural voices around me.  **I could just as easily have been
led in a better direction**.

If a nurse had told me, straight out, that sleeping with my baby was
actually healthier than separate sleep, I'd have done it.  If she had said
that it was *good* to hold my baby, even when he wasn't crying for it, I'd
have done it.  But I was left to invent parenting on my own, with Dr. Spock,
the formula booklets, my older sister, and the thin blue Womanly Art of
Breastfeeding as my only guides, and it took me years to get it reasonably
right.  If *any* hospital nurse had spoken to me in what I felt was a
sensible way, I'd have listened and learned.  As it was, the only two
sensible things I heard were tucking in the sharp little plastic piece on my
nursing bra so it didn't rub the baby, and reacquainting myself with the
baby for a bit each time I picked him up instead of just wordlessly putting
him to my breast.  Both those comments are seared into my memory.  I was
primed for good information, would have recognized it when I heard it, but
never heard it.

I gave up a bra years ago but still shave my legs.  I clean the house before
a repairman comes over.  I worry about what the neighbors think.  *As a new
mother, I needed to hear gentle voices of non-culturally-generated reason*
and there weren't very many.  If you had left your card with me and walked
away, Laurie, I'd have listened to whatever voices there were, and they
wouldn't have been yours.

Diane Wiessinger, mighty lucky to be an MS, IBCLC, LLLL

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