Pregnant women could benefit from being in touch with at least one mother
who has breastfed. This might help overcome the biggest barrier to
breastfeeding, other peoples lack of confidece in it. It is hard to
prepare a mother to be for the pressure she will be under from family,
friends and health professionals, particularly whilst still very
vulnerable in hospital to introduce at least some bottle feeding. The
pressure from health carers comes as a particular shock as during
pregnancy she will have been encouraged to breastfeed by them.
If we are trying to avoid confrontation with these professionals the
problem of preparing a mother to resist demands to bottle feed is
compounded.
If anyone has suggestions on how to boost confidence in newly delivered
mothers I'd be very interested to hear them. Please bear in mind that
access to the baby may be restricted because the mother is refusing to
bottle feed, access to a counsellor whilst in hospital is restricted by
lack of telephone facilities, discharge from hospital could be refused if
a mother is refusing to bottle feed. So we are really looking at something
to up her confidence before the birth, maybe from social contacts.
I have a Social Sciences degree and have tried to approach this issue
objectively.

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