My former nurslings are now 33 and 30, so I guess I qualify to respond to
this.  I think I learned for the first from The Womanly Art of
Breastfeeding and Karen Pryor's Nursing Your Baby.  I don't think I went to
La Leche League meetings till the first was one and we had moved to
California.  But then again, I may have gone to LLL in Texas,too, because I
certainly knew about cosleeping and nursing in a side-lying position.   I
had a master's degree in maternal-child health nursing before the first was
born and felt like I learned more from parenting than I had from the degree
about the day-to-day life with a baby.  I followed all the guidelines
available at the time about latch on but still had sore nipples initially.
What I felt at the time was that as a fair skinned blonde that I should
expect some initial soreness while my body got used to the process just
like I had to be more careful about sunburn.  I don't know where I heard
that idea, but at the time it resonated with me.  Now when I teach
asymetric latch and cross cradle, I often share this earlier belief that I
had and how that doesn't need to be the case.  I remember hand expressing
to provide milk to a sick baby in the premature nursery.  I think I learned
from the books or my childbirth educator.  Otherwise I never was away from
my kids till they were over a year and never needed to pump or express.  I
went to work part time with both when they were about a year and a half
old.

The think I remember most about LLL is that it was the one place it was OK
to nurse an older child.  After the kids got to the age where they wanted
to see and pat the other breast while nursing, breastfeeding became
something done at home, in the church nursery, or in a sling. Number one
weaned after age four and about 1 1/2 years into a tandem nursing
experience.  That definately was something done only at home.

It has been nice to take this trip down memory lane for myself and with the
stories that all of you shared.  However, it makes me think that there are
many of us out there who are not "spring chickens" any more.  Sometime in
the next decade we will all likely be leaving this field to those of the
younger generation.

Warmly,

Sharon Jimenez, RN, IBCLC
Apache Diabetes Wellness Center
Whiteriver, AZ
(where we had snow yesterday and still have a little on the ground)

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