Phyllis wrote:

<I avoid the nursery as much as possible. That's where I see nurses doing
all sorts of things with bottles to make sure baby consumes the required
cc's of formula. >

Like "deep throat", literally forced feedings?

Unfortunately I remember participating in this all too often when working
nights as the only nurse, when the aides and I had "x" number of babies
between us to feed at least two times per shift, (and with the premies,
three times per shift) from the mid 1950's on. No doubt some of this came
into play with bottle feeding my own first two children to speed up the
feeding so I could get on to other things, (like housework;-) while having
dutifully held them rather than propping, then burping and cleaning them up,
as had been the custom in the nursery in our hospital till moving to a
newer, larger, "more modern" department the early1950's

Eventually, when I moved on to becoming the inservice instructor in our OB
department when perinatal medicine arrived on the scene, I remember
thinking, (as I passed the nursery during the morning, before the swaddled
but screaming babies were to be taken out to their mothers), how it seemed
almost like a "sterile (?;-)" concentration camp and how glad I was not to
have to go in and participate (having much more important things to do like
teaching L&D nurses to read monitor strips, and to scrub at C.S., etc.,
ahem, ahem).

I am very thankful to have been enlightened by LLL and other influences, and
to have finally found the enjoyment of breastfeeding, the overall effect of
which I believe gradually changed my own mothering for the better for all my
children. I often reflect on the fact that I did the best I could with the
knowledge I had at any given point in time. But still, I sometimes feel I
owe some of my children some sort of an apology, somehow, some day before I
die.  All this fuels my motivation to continue to meet new mothers and
babies "where they are, right now" and serve them with information, support
and verbal appreciation for how well they are meeting the challenges of
mothering in our mixed-up society.
Jean
***********************
K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC
Dayton, OH USA

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