Kathy D. - give 'em H---. I well remember how scandalized my
(bottlefeeding) mom was when she came to help me just before my
first was born, and discovered that I had not bought a bottle!
And the baby was due in a few days! Panic! She scurried out to
buy a couple of bottles. Made sure after Danielle was born that
there was boiled water in said bottles ready. Poor mom. First
grandchild and she had never breastfed - she was real insecure.
**One of our most important jobs is to give new moms self-
confidence.** I just couldn't imagine myself NOT breastfeeding -
(and no LLL, no prenatal or postnatal support, no books available
in Israel back then, etc. etc.). To this day, I credit *role
modelling* for this otherwise-unaccountable sense of self-
confidence that I had. When I was 19-20 years old, I had spent
about 9 months working in a kibbutz "baby house", where, of the
11 babies in residence, 10 were breastfed. As a result, I assumed
that everyone in Israel breastfed. Imagine my shock when I became
a mother in an urban environment some 7 years later and
discovered that in the "big city" I was "the crazy American"
because I breastfed.....Naomi Bar-Yam, are you out there? Can I
entice you to comment?
Besides (boy did I digress! Five hours sleep is just not
enough....), whatever happened to respecting other cultures? For
all we know, this is what may have been at work with the teenager
who was almost at term and hadn't even purchased a baby bottle -
wow - or a place to sleep - wow - for the expected baby.
Many "traditional" Jews will refuse to have anything whatsoever
in the house for an expected baby before the woman is safely
delivered. Everything is usually picked out, and may even be
ordered and paid for, but if it is in the home, it's considered
to be an invitation for the Evil Eye. This is taken very
seriously even by highly educated people. I realize that this is
completely tangential to Kathy D.'s point - I just wanted to harp
once again on the importance of culture.....
Judy "Harpo" Knopf, in Beer Sheva, Israel