Carol writes:
"Now we are supplementing with formula at
16-20 ounces in 24 hours. Needless to say, the mother is most discouraged."

I'm working right now with a mom/baby with a similar situation. At 4 wks,
baby's just back to birth wt. - although this represents a gain of a pound
in one wk., once they started supplementing. What struck me about "my"
mother is that she's *not* "most discouraged", even though she's pumping,
BFing directly, and supplementing. She says that BFing is "going well". By
which she seems to mean that the baby is now going to breast pretty happily,
even though he's not doing much eating while he's there. (And he's no longer
starving,a good thing by anybody's standards.)

It puzzles me that women are so willing to be content with such (to my eyes)
mediocre results. It could just be the old half-empty vs. half-full thing,
but this woman doesn't have a half-full kind of perspective, and it strikes
me as something far different. It says to me that women have been led to
believe that BFing is a very hard and risky business, and often doesn't
"work" at all, so that as long as the baby doesn't reject the breast (and
the mother) outright women can consider that it's "going well". Reminds me a
bit of the kind of insecurity many women have about relationships with men -
like a bad partner is better than none at all. It bothers me. Just another
subtle way we've learned to de-value our bodies and our selves and our own
power.

Cathy Bargar RN IBCLC, Feeling Fussy in Ithaca NY

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