Pat Young:
     As regards types of milk, I've probably said before, and I'm sure to say again, that it annoys me to see all the rows of bovine milk, manipulated in various ways (full cream, low fat, high calcium, and all their ilk), every one of them labelled "Milk".  Other milk on sale is labelled "soy milk" ("milk"???) or "goat milk".  Cheese, similarly, is labelled just "cheese" if it is bovine, and "goat chees" or "sheep cheese" if it comes from these animals.  The message is: bovine stuff is the norm.
    If we talk of human milk, our culture makes us specify this, and call it "breastmilk" or "mother's milk" or "human milk".  So a baby having physiologically unnatural stuff is receiving "milk", but a breastfed baby is receiving "breastmilk".  In an ideal world, we would be saying the breastfed baby is receiving milk and the artificially-fed baby is receiving "bovine-origin milk", and so on.  Okay, I can't change the world, but I know I can grumble to Lactnet!
    Another use of terms which annoys me is "The baby is using the breast as a dummy (pacifier)".   Grrr!!!  So entrenched is this idea, in this dummy-using society (Australia), that sometimes when I gently correct the mother and suggest that other babies are using the pacifier as a breast, they look at me as if I'm crazy, or take offence.  They just don't get the point, the concept of an object separate from Mum as the vehicle for non-nutritive sucking is so deeply entrenched.  (Yes, I know, the pacifier is also used when the poor little baby needs nutritive sucking, when Mums want to space out feeds ... with all that ensues.)
     Thanks for listening.
          Virginia 

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