Hello all,

I carefully read through all the postings and would like to add a different aspect. I'm gonna be very personal and make myself vulnerable, so I hope I won't regret it afterwards. I think we all have things we are not aware of, like with the progesterone filling up (pfff... still have to check that out... didn't know it and to be honest... don't really understand or believe it yet...); we all may have issues that interfere with saying the right thing under the given circumstances.
I was a sad-eyed mom with a trembling lower lip just about two hours ago. Two of my four daughters (the 13 and the 16-year old) let it all out on me and shouted and cried, angry because I, in their opinion, didn't pay enough positive attention to their good grades. Especially the 16-year old was rather furious: she had to do 13 tests the other week and got her last grade back yesterday. She did well, apart from one or two, only one being insufficient. She can always try one thing again and she will redo the insufficient one, which will then definitely become a good score. She said I shouldn't be wining over her results. Thing is... she often tells about how she doesn't like school and how she doesn't do homework. She only studies for the tests and because she is so damn smart, she always gets good grades.
That fact, her being so smart, is why I am not always impressed with her results. It's not that she always has to score a 10 (being the highest, 1 the lowest); it's fine to have a seven or an eight. I have a hard time, though, with the fact that she doesn't give her best. She, on the other hand, says there's more to life than learning and doing homework for school. She *is* not school or a head; she's a social being, she says.
I don't disagree on that in itself, but there's something else to it. The world is complicated; it's not just about hunting and gathering. We have complicated societies all over the world. The bright brains among us, in my feeling, have a responsibility to give their best, not only for themselves, but for society as a whole. Where does that feeling come from...? Don't know for sure, but the next story most likely has to do with it...
My mom died in 2006; she had been a nicotine, alcohol and anti-depressant addict for many years. That lead to a divorce between my parents in 1983, when I was 18, after many troublesome years. That divorce, along with my mom being the way she was and putting her own misery before our well-being, had an enormous impact on my sole sister and me. I already dated my husband, but my sister still lived with my mom and did not build up her own life. She died in 1999, 32 years old. She was born dysmature (from my mom smoking, I suppose) and she and I were not breastfed.
A long story short: I know from personal experience what it means when a mother puts her own interests first. It had many consequences, several of which I'm still struggling with. Idling through life, taking things too easy, has become something I am kind of allergic to. (I know that may result in me being to hard on myself, but I won't go into that now...) And it's not even for the grades that I would like her see working; I myself have always worked because I wanted to master whatever thing I was learning. When you master something, a good grade is what follows. It is then not a goal to achieve in itself. Learning to master something gives me great satisfaction; I really think it is empowering to use your talents and see the corresponding results.
Back to breastfeeding: I often see parents who have *not* worked really hard, although you could argue that their idea of 'working hard' just differs from mine... Nevertheless, I really see situations where parents *know* where to get help and just don't. Like knowing you should take your child to a doctor, because it is ill, but staying home, because you like the movie you're watching... :-s
What I'm trying to say, to admit, if you wish: I can be and mostly am very empathetic with parents. When they work to master the art of breastfeeding, a happy, thriving child will be the result, which is an investment in the years to come and increased chances of the infant growing into a balanced adult, developing in his parents' care, now and in the future. Despite that, I find it hard to just 'tune in with the crying wolves' (as my husband calls it) because everything bad fell out of the blue sky for them and there was nothing that could be done. Often, this isn't true... It's make-believe; most of the time, a *lot* can be done. Saying "I cannot breastfeed" is often a disguised "I don't want to breastfeed." It is not fighting as if you were the lion mom I introduced earlier this week.
How come, we have drifted away so far from the animal instinct of defending the offspring with our natural resources, fighting dumm strategies (and definitely not opting for them voluntarily without trying to achieve the best) when these endanger natural development? What can we do to get a mom closer to that, to make her consciously aware of her options and the support she can get to attain them, in order to (like, I think, Liz said) prevent those feelings of guilt that may show up later, when the emotional upheaval has subsided? So, the question remains... what to say?

I hope I have managed to make clear what my point in this issue is... All of this is so complicated and has so many hooks in different psychologic areas, that it is hard to disentangle all of them...
Thanks for the other postings, that made me aware of what I just wrote. I hope I will be able to come to terms with certain things still more than I already have...

Warmly,

Marianne Vanderveen, Netherlands

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