> She doesn't want anything less than nearly full =
>breastfeeding.  Her definition of success is all or nothing.

You might gently remind her that her *son's* definition is very different.
He wants her breast fully as much as he wants her milk, and by offering it
with an SNS, he'll be able to get all the milk she's able to produce, for as
long as they both want to.

The only difference between her and other nursing mothers will be that
she'll have more washing to do.  But that would be true if she bottle-fed,
and they'd both miss out on breastfeeding.

Sometimes I think adoptive mothers are better off than biological mothers
whose milk supplies are less than perfect.  The adoptive mom gets her
priorities straight from the start:  "This is my child, whose soul and body
are fed at my breast.  Some of it is my milk, but we don't know or care
exactly how much.  The rest is love."

I had a very-low-milk mother of a non-latching 17 day old here yesterday,
and she had her first experience with a feeding tube.  We had a terrible
time getting it to work - she'd never had him latch before, and somehow the
tubing just wasn't placed right.  I finally decided it was because it was
the 13th of the month.  But we got it going at last, baby snuggled in, and
they became a nursing couple.  She'd been pretty maxed out from all our
efforts, though, and when he needed another nibble before they left, she
offered a bottle.  Oh, the face he made!  He'd been to heaven and he wasn't
too keen on coming back.  Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the babies
who are forced to rely on bottles at the start, end up refusing them
completely once they're able to stay fed at breast?

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY

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