Karen and Terry Lynn: Karen, your posting tonight suddenly brought back a deeply buried memory which I would like to share "intimately" with all of my 370 friends here on Lactnet. I havent' thought about this in maybe 18 years or so. BACKGROUND:I wasn't BF...born in Illinois in 1951 when my mother was told "redheads can't breastfeed." Yeah, right. Anyway, my mom was adopted, so what did she know? - plus no-one was BFing in the 50's (precisely why LLLI came into being) I had been married a couple of years, not pregnant yet...living in Yucatan and visiting mayan villages all the time. One weekend, at the Baha'i Institute south of Merida in a small town near the ruins of Uxmal, I asked one of the maya ladies who was attending a weekend event there if I might hold her baby for a while. She smiled and happily handed her little treasure over to my arms. Here's the memory: I took this child of, oh, maybe 7-10 months into a room by myself, sat down in the hammock...took out my breast, and tried to offer it to the baby. Naturally, the kid looked puzzled for a minute...and then figured out 1) I wasn't his usual source of nourishment (different facial features, not to mention smell, etc.) and 2) My breast was a whole lot whiter than his momma's...which must have been the clincher that got him crying. Back he went to his mother. End of Memory. I ask myself - what made me do this thing? My mother wasn't breastfed. I wasn't breastfed. I wasn't pregnant. Yet some inner urge wanted to know what having a child suckle my breast would feel like. Obviously I knew that nothing was going to come out. Or did I ? POST SCRIPT: My son, now 17, breastfed for 3 yr.8 mo. My daughter,11, for 3 yrs. POSSIBLE MORAL TO THIS TALE: Maternal instinct will eventually prevail. At least that is what helps me keep the faith. Buenas noches, Roberta