Darillyn,

I wanted to say in response to an earlier post that I too have seen women
gain confidence from the fact that if women are able to breastfeed babies
without having recently been pregnant that they can persist through their
difficulties and or continue breastfeeding with confidence. I've also seen
people change their attitudes towards relactation, viewing breastfeeding as
more open ended as Virginia described. I become more and more convinced that
it is the breastfeeding culture (microculture within a macro culture that
may be adversarial) which can be found within mother to mother support
groups or within individual families etc) which allows for greater
flexibility in lactation.

For the mum going to the Middle East, it really upsets me that the powers
that be do not view the emotional health of their youngest citizens as more
important. I think that the mum is planning for resuming breastfeeding when
she returns shows her commitment to her baby and to breastfeeding. I can't
imagine that it would be a supportive environment for doing this. After
reading your post, I wondered just who will be caring for the baby? Partner?
Sister? Mum? If it is either of the latter I know that were I in that
situation I would be wanting my sister or mother to continue breastfeeding
the child for me while I was gone whether they were lactatating at that time
or not. Very possible with a supplemental system at the breast. I wonder
what this mum would think of it? It's a fairly critical time as far as
breastfeeding goes for the babe and I guess you would have see a few mums,
as I have who have been adopting (from Guatelmala for instance) and have
visited their child to be and breastfed them at 3-4 months without
difficulty but on finalisation of the adoption and the child is 6-8 months
the child has been unwilling to return to breastfeeding. I often wonder how
much of this reluctance is an age thing and how much might be related to the
child being abandoned yet again (and that it would have been much better if
the mother had not visited at all). Certainly, for this mum she needs to be
thinking about how she will transition her baby to the care of another and
then back to her to minimise the trauma to the baby. MOTHER AND CHILD
SEPARATION IS NO SMALL THING!

Oops, a post offending Western cultural sensitivities re breastfeeding and
personal autonomy Would I do that??

Karleen Gribble
Australia

> I just wanted to make some suggestions that might help the active duty =
> mom who wants to return to breastfeeding when her three month deployment =
> is over.  She needs to know that her baby may forget what the breast is =
> for and not automatically accept it when she gets back, but that she can =
> teach him to nurse again, with some patience and creativity.  (Many =
> adoptive moms are able to do this with babies who are the age her child =
> will be, or older.)  She may want to be prepared with a supplementer, =
> both to help her get the baby back to the breast and to make it possible =
> for her to get a maximum amount of breast stimulation from the suckling, =
> to increase her milk supply, which I would think would have diminished, =
> despite her plans to pump. =20
>

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html