Echoing Heather's post on how this affects health care staff in the
way they respond to women in need of help for breastfeeding problems,
and in particular on how the emotions that come up in debriefing show
better than any other arguments that breastfeeding matters to women..

Making a safe opportunity for people to share and process these
experiences is really rewarding.  Some of the people who have started
off being almost antagonistic, end up being the staunchest supporters
of breastfeeding.

It occurred to me on reading this thread that the lack of support,
especailly some of the more blatantly non-supportive comments, could
be perceived as an effort to protect another woman from pain.  It's
not very effective, but it makes me think more kindly about the person
if I can see their undermining behavior as their way of trying to play
down the importance of breastfeeding so another woman won't feel the
loss so acutely. Since I get almost homicidal when I hear about
episodes like this, I welcome anything that makes me demonize my
colleagues less.

Debriefiing is not part of the process for getting approved as a
mother-to-mother counselor here, BTW.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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