Judy LeVan Fram wrote: "We are controllers, not watchers, facilitators, responders, gentle guiders. It's, as Diane W said, our language that can chip away at the ugly building we call MOM MAKES BABY BREASTFEED, and building up something more like "here is how we move into a lovely breastfeeding relationship between a mother and her breastfeeding baby who gets so many needs met during one 'simple' activity"...."
It is exactly the paradigm of "controlling" and "making" that is inherent in Western and Westernized cultures (rather than the paradigm of "facilitating") that adds to the grief of a mother who faces--and/or whose baby faces-- extraordinary challenges in the building of the breastfeeding relationship. I am a mother, IBCLC, La Leche League Leader, and maternal mental health care provider who has experienced the relative ease and loveliness of "succeeding" at facilitating a "normal" breastfeeding relationship with a full-term newborn to whom I gave birth at home. I have also experienced the great and prolonged hardship of trying to facilitate a "how-close-can-we-get-to-'normal' -given-all-these-special needs?" breastfeeding relationship with a low- birth- weight, likely also premature, and definitely malnourished three- month- old adopted baby who spent her first three months of life suffering from and surviving institutional neglect and coping with the resulting clinical depression and who many months later was diagnosed as having a systemic and mosaic pattern of sensory integration dysfunction including in her mouth , low muscle tone including in her mouth (not just transitory weakness due to the malnourishment), and oral motor planning challenges (which create her expressive speech disorder today) , I can attest to how incredibly, incredibly difficult it is to persist in "facilitating" when "normal" breastfeeding is "failing." The more the value of breastfeeding is understood by a mother, the greater that difficulty. I count my and her lucky stars that we got as far as we did and her happiness and improved well-being and development were gained, in large part, from the therapeutic nature of our extremely difficult journey. Even while I work to try to help change the paradigm, I have the greatest compassion for any mother who is trying to "make" the baby breastfeed.
Cynthia
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Cynthia Good Mojab, MS, IBCLC, RLC, CATSM
www.lifecirclecc.com http://lactspeak.com/speaker/cynthiagood-mojab
http://lifespantkd.blogspot.com
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