I don't get the feeling that anyone is advocating purposely trying to inflict guilt, just trying to point out how the fear of inflicting guilt is not used to prevent anyone from trying to educate parents on other issues, and shouldn't with breastfeeding, either.  I think many women just naturally feel a little guilty for not breastfeeding, but that it would not be an issue, in a lot of cases, without someone first bringing up the topic by telling them that they shouldn't feel guilty. 

There are some people who are so defensive about it that you can't so much as acknowledge that there is such a thing as breastfeeding without them taking offense.  I will never forget a presentation for a group of prospective adoptive parents.  I often gave the infant care presentations, for that agency, including some info on breastfeeding but, since I was a part of the applicant group, at this time, another woman was giving the presentation.   She told about having nursed her first adopted baby for a few months, with the SNS, but then said that she had decided not to nurse her second adopted baby, because her husband wanted to be able to bottle feed him.  One of the fathers in the group interrupted her and told her how unfair she was for "pouring the guilt" on him and his wife, for having bottle fed their bio baby!  She was completely dumbfounded!  She had never even met them and had no idea that they'd even HAD a bio baby, let alone how they had fed the baby, but he was convinced that she was purposely trying to make him feel guilty.  I can't imagine what he would have done if he'd heard my, much more gung-ho, presentation on breastfeeding an adopted baby, instead.  Of course, that was an extreme case, but I think some of the same thing goes on in a lot of cases.     

I often try to mention something about the fact that many moms have trouble breastfeeding because they aren't given the support and information they need.  Especially talking to women from my mother's generation, I have really good luck with that.  I felt that the topic could be especially touchy with my mother, since she did not nurse the kids she gave birth to, and I was nursing adopted babies.  Like many moms at that time, her very brief effort to nurse her first (me) was totally sabotaged, with both of us highly medicated, and me asleep for several days, then only being "allowed" to nurse every four hours, for five minutes at a time.  Being 3,000 miles from her own mother didn't help her either.  When, after a week or so and not seeing much evidence of milk, the doctor topped things off by telling her that her breasts were too small anyway, that was the end of that.  She didn't think there was any reason to even try to nurse her other two babies, and two of the three of us have spent our entire adult lives fighting with immune deficiency diseases (however, I have not said anything about the fact that breastfeeding may have prevented them). Anyway, the first time she saw me nursing my adopted baby, I told her that very few mothers would have produced much milk under the circumstances she faced when I was born, and she accepted that, and was actually proud that I was breastfeeding.  Had I not done that, however, I think it is very possible that she would have felt like my choice to breastfeeding was in some way a commentary on how she fed me. 

Darillyn

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