Dear Maryelle,
thank you, thank you, very much for your so thoughtful discussion of moms,
talking and listening to them, their expectations, learning to follow our
instincts, etc.
This is also one of my pet soapbox issues, which is that above all what new
parents have to learn is to follow their own instincts; breastfeeding, if
they really get into it, really helps, because by learning to listen to your
baby's cues, your baby teaches you how to parent--- I certainly went thru the
same thing you did when my daughter was born, a year out of my pediatric
residency, I knew in my gut that what I had been taught made no sense and I
followed her lead--

Ironically, I find that many women enjoy hearing my own stories of new
parenthood confusion, learning to follow instincts etc, to help reinforce
what they are experiencing as they begin to realize that pediatricians and
other "experts", including LCs, do not/ can not have all the answers, and
they have to learn to trust themselves---


But if a mom has spent her whole life unempowered and not trusting herself or
her body, and then is told she now must be In Charge of this baby, unlearning
all of that may be more than one mom can do with one little teacher.

This feeds directly into Noriko's question about what does breastfeeding have
to do with feminist issues?

This is another soapbox issue of mine, because I think breastfeeding is very
definitely a feminist issue. It is too late at night for me to get onto this
soapbox.  But to me, at the root of our low breastfeeding rates, is women's
distrust of their own bodies, their buy-in to the idea that their breasts
exist primarily to help them attract/please a mate, but that their role in
nurturing the next generation is insignificant-- i.e., that women's bodies
are unimportant in their own right, and only important in realtionship to
men's perception of them.
Marsha Walker said there are three general themes apparent in today's
society: patriarchy, commercialism, and technology. Breastfeeding is counter
to all three of these major cultural themes, and without this cultural
support, it is no wonder we're facing these mammoth issues.

To spell it out a little more:
Patriarchy: your breasts are not for the baby, they're for your
husband/boyfriend or the guys down the street.
Patriarchy: Children need to be taught to be independent, parents need to be
in charge; don't spoil your baby;
Patriarchy: Doctors and other "experts" know more than you do
Patriarchy: Anything a woman can do (birth a baby, feed a baby, make
decisions about herself or her family), a man can invent a way to do better.
Patriarchy: The breast as a functional organ system is ignored in medical
literature , teaching, and study. We skip from Tanner staging (puberty) to
the BSE(breast self exam to look for cancer).
Patriarchy: Even tho doctors know they only got three hours of training on
breastfeeding in med school, many still think they know more than LCs, and in
fact don't bother to find out what LC training is.
Patriarchy: The medical community distrust of LLLI (only mothers), suggesting
that LLLI info is unscientific "old wives tales" when in fact it is LLL recs
that are based on documented research, and medical recommendations that are
so frequently based on old doc's tales.
Patriarchy: (               you can fill in the blanks, fellow lactnetters)

Commercialism: Advertising about artificial baby milk; the huge industry that
supports it; the insidious "niceness" and apparent good citizenship of the
formula companies as they so generously support the American Academy of
Pediatrics and make formula companies look like such gentle good guys so that
the docs don't even recognize how they are being used to market products.
Commercialism: the baby bottle as a cultural logo for babyhood.
Commercialism: the difficulty promoting something if there's no way someone
can make money off of it; the ease of promoting something if someone can make
money off of it.
Commercialism: the rarity of breastfeeding as a significant topic in the
major parenting magazines, who are supported by commercial advertising, baby
foods, etc.
Commercialism: We in the lactation support business have to take advantage of
the pump companies to help us sell breastfeeding. We think it's a great
improvement if we stop using Ross bf literature and go to Medela's.
Commercialism: Many LC's have trouble getting insurance or families to pay
for their "cognitive" work (this is also a patriarchy issue, since it is not
seen as cognitive work, but rather devalued as "women's work,"and hence less
reimbursible) and have to rely on making more money as a pump rental station,
even when they are actively discouraging mom's from inappropriate use of
pumps. The product (see technology below) is seen as more valuable than the
consult.
Commercialism: (fill inthe blank)

Technology: Science in the 20th century can do a better job of making milk
than old fashioned breasts can.
Technology: Breastmilk is just another kind of baby milk, the process of
feeding by breast is unimportant; nurturing is unimportant, if you want to
use breast milk you can pump and feed EBM by bottle.
Technology: Pumping is the modern way to go. Especially electric. Hand
expression is oldfashioned and maybe dirty (sexually or hygenically).
Technology: OSHA recs, gloves, etc.
Technology: We can scientifcally come up with RDA's for all the nutrients,
and breastmilk isn't up to our standards.
Technology: A quote from Oski's pediatric text in the section on infant
feeding (and Oski is one of our most vocal advocates of bf, and most vocally
against cow's milk) in his text book, in a chapter not authored by him, in
bringing up the tremendous variability of breastmilk from mom to mom, feed to
feed, beginning to end of feed, age to age etc., it says something like,
"Human milk would not meet industrial quality control standards for uniform
consistency."
(Patriarchy: Neither would blood, lymph, or sperm, but only milk gets this
criticism.)
Technology (your quote here)

Well, and I haven;t even finished reading all the lactnet digests that came
in today.
whew!

And, Noriko, I haven't even scratched the surface of this feminist thing.
 what about the feminists who think that bottle feeding is freeing them from
female household drudgery so they can work fulltime in the more important
world of men, because oldfashioned women's work is too biologically defined
and family centered. That's a whole issue in and of itself.  don't get me
started...

No, I agree, we do not have to be parents to have meaningful lives, both
within ourselves spiritually, and in our outreach to others and all humanity;
And womanhood is not synonymous with motherhood-- there are many paths for a
woman to live her life, mothering is only one; and while we may choose one or
several paths, none of us can choose them all.  But does that mean that
if/when we do choose to parent that we should take as our model of ideal
parenthood the patriarchal model of the distanced and controlling father? Is
there no value to the nurturing, responsive model?

Enough already. G'night. tina