Alicia writes, at the end of her long and intelligent post on talking to AF
moms about the dangers of not bf,
<< I will give some serious thought to ways of tactfully bringing up the
issue with mothers and would welcome Lactnetters' input on this touchy
subject. >>

One thing I would like to suggest to all of the docs and other baby-hcp's out
there is to listen for questions that mothers are asking you, where this
should be part of the response. If a mother or any patient is actually asking
you something, it intrinsically suggests that they want to know the answer
and also that anything you DON'T mention will be seen by them as NOT part of
the answer.

I'm thinking for example of a mother who asks, "Why does he have so many ear
infections?"    Usually the answer to this is:  "Babies have these little
itty bitty ear tubes with a bend in them so stuff accummulates there; but
when they get bigger it will go away."

Instead, one could say, "Well, there are a lot of factors.  One is that
babies have these little itty bitty etc.   Another is heredity -- some
families have more ear infections than others.   Another big one is that your
child wasn't breastfed at all -- formula-fed kids do have a lot more ear
infections, along with related problems like asthma etc.   We should probably
talk about helping you bf if you have other children --  you can't help your
genes, but not bf probably did make little TImmy's problem worse than it
needed to be."

or etc.

That contextualizes it.  It puts some of the weight on the doc instead of
just the mom ("we should help etc").  It acknowledges other factors that they
can't control so that it isn't flat out blaming.  And it offers some way to
use the information (next time etc) so that it isn't just I-told-you-so.

Similarly, if you are running through a list of lifestyle changes for a mom
with an asthmatic kid, you might want to this in a sort of parentheses.  For
example,
"Humidifer....Avoid dust under the bed...etc etc.  If Timmy were a newborn
I'd urge you to breastfeed him, because even kids who are genetically
predisposed to asthma have much less of it if they were breastfed than if
they were fed formula; that doesn't help you with Timmy now but it is
definitely something you might want to keep in mind if you should have other
children."

And of course she will (one hopes) also keep it in mind when she talks to her
pregnant sister etc.

Again, these don't get you every single mother; but they expand your group,
in particular to those who may be receptive to hearing it.

Elisheva Urbas
compulsive editor and nonIBCLC bf agitator

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