Yesterday I was at the grocery store. Met a colleague, an Ob/gyn who has BF
her 3 children for nearly 10 years in total. She introduced me to her
friend who was visiting from her current home abroad, and then said. 'I have
to tell you a great breastfeeding story about her!'. Friend smiled, so I
said sure, fire away.
This friend had her first baby in 1974. BF was difficult, baby unhappy,
mother sore, not enough milk. Her mother, who'd had 4 children of her own,
was staying with her. Mother was advising longer between-meal intervals to
'save up more milk', and then went to a pharmacy to buy a pump to 'protect'
her daughter's nipples because baby's sucking was so painful. Probably at
that point it would have been a bicycle horn pump, too, but it never got
that far. This was in Finnmark, the northernmost part of the country and
the most sparsely populated. The grandmother asked for a pump, and the
customer in line behind her asked what she needed it for. The grandmother
told her. The woman turned out to be a member of the mother-to-mother BF
support org. here and a volunteer counselor. She went back to the house
with the grandmother and helped them sort it out. BF continued for a long
time afterwards, to everyone's satisfaction.
Twenty-seven years later, this woman remembers that volunteer with affection
and gratitude, and enjoys hearing this story told to near-strangers in a
supermarket.
That's why we do it. We can't help it.
Rachel Myr
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