Pardee's story and how shocking it was for others makes it clear that we
must be willing to bring breastfeeding past a few weeks out of the closet.
Were it me, Pardee, I would leave that information to the end and sort of
slip it in in some way. For what it is worth, I ahve found that mentioning
how mothers have breastfed (and made milk) for adoptive babies in the
absence of pregnancy has similar, but not quite so personal, shock-value. I
often use that information because it forces recognition that the audience
may not know as much as they theink they do about breastfeeding. Because it
is not personal, such information often generates other questions.

Getting back to my first point, if you slip it in after the rest of your
presentation, I suspect the shocking nature of it would not detract from
what else you said and just might help these people to see that
breastfeeding is a process of parenting and that some mother-baby/child
pairs are ready for other acitivites sooner than others and that it is OK
to breastfeed past a set date.

You have my admiration from (according to Cosby) a "not-quite" mother of one!
:-)  (for those of you not from the US, Bill Cosby is a comedian with five
children who firmly believes that you really aren't a parent unless you
have at least two!)



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 %% "We are all faced with a series of great opportunities      %%
 %% brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."            %%
 %% definition of a lactation consulting service.               %%
 %% Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC - [log in to unmask]          %%
 %% Homewood, Illinois USA                                      %%

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