It's been enlightening to see the shocked reactions from some US subscribers
on discovering shields being marketed directly to mothers.  How were they
sold before?

Here, direct sales are the **only** way they are marketed, helped along at a
furious pace by the implied endorsement from them being handed out in a
casual and cavalier way by maternity ward staff who have the same
information about how to use them that mothers do: NADA.  None of the three
companies peddling shields in Norway have any package insert saying why or
how to use them, or why NOT to, they are called something like 'aids to
breastfeeding' (can't remember the exact text) and there is no information
on the packaging about the size either.  All this has a LOT to do with my
skepticism to shields.  I didn't perceive them as a serious product, in the
sense of having a justifiable role in the professional support of
breastfeeding, since they are marketed on the same racks as pacifiers,
teethers, and feeding bottles, right next to the pre-moistened baby wipers
and the disposable diaper aisles.

Of course shields will be marketed directly to mothers, as long as there is
money to be made by so doing.  I have a high index of suspicion when the
same companies that market shields, also sell feeding bottles, nipples,
bottle warmers, and all the other paraphernalia that anyone NOT
breastfeeding, 'needs' for their baby, and that can be sold to pumping
mothers as easily as to formula-feeders.  Yes, I am a hardened cynic.

I have seen cases where shields did not mean the end of breastfeeding, and
even cases where they seemed to help in transitioning to the breast from
cup.  I've been involved in just a handful of such cases myself.  However,
most of the shield cases I work with are the kind where the shield was
introduced as an attempt to solve some kind of problem not amenable to
treatment by shield, and I try to salvage the breastfeeding from there.
It's late and I can't remember where I read it, but I agree completely with
the statement that 'unless you are going to follow the dyad until the shield
is no longer needed, you should not take responsibility for introducing it'.

If the manufacturers of shields honestly cared about breastfeeding they
would not sell them like candy or toys, and they would at the very least
include information on proper use with every set sold.  That they continue
not to, because the law here does not require them to, is for me very strong
circumstantial evidence that they don't care doodly-squat about anything but
their own sales figures.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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