What Sarah wrote is that given a choice between "informal" milk sharing and formula, she would choose formula. She did not say she would choose formula over banked milk. And I also agree with her point that we are such a very long way away from having a world where safe, tested pasteurized human milk is available for all babies, that we need to deal with the world as it is now. I agree that fully informed women should be allowed to make the decision to offer informally provided human milk to their children, but I would like to have other options until if and when we have enough affordable banked milk to go around. I would take my best friend's milk and I would take my sister in law's milk, but I do not want milk from a total stranger on the internet.

And as we debate all these issues I agree with all of those who say that normal is a very loaded word. Our job is to provide women with all  the available data and evidence and then step back, and let them parent as they feel is right, without judgement from us. I would like to see breastfeeding beyond the first year described as just that...something along the lines of ...Breastfeeding Beyond Infancy... descriptive but neutral. It is much more important to negate the idea that breastfeeding beyond infancy is abnormal, than it is to push the idea that it is normal. You then alienate all the women who weaned earlier by calling their experience abnormal. 

In building a movement, I think you get farther by empowering people than deflating them.

Kathy Lilleskov RN IBCLC

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