----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Mulford" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 6:54 PM
Subject: [LACTNET] The "choice" to breastfeed

**Hello Chris,

I would like to think along with you and will walk through your message.

(snip)
> Many women are formula feeding today who
> CHOSE to breastfeed when their babies were younger, and then had to 
> "choose"
> formula because their backs were against the wall.

**What circumstances do you think of: no opportunity to pump at the work 
place? No (good) help in hospital or after discharge to overcome problems?
I find this a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, understand what you mean. 
On the other, I know many women who knew they could have called me or I 
could have referred them to some other HCP to (help) solve their problems, 
and they didn't, because, like you say further on in this posting, other 
things were (supposed to be) more important. And I really don't think that 
is always to blame on society. Yeah, well... if you think it all the way 
through, everything is... hahaha. But seriously, I think sometime the blame 
is put on society and others too easily. I'm reading William Sears' 
'Attachment Parenting' and I think to a certain extent some people are just 
hesitant or even reluctant to change their lives to a rhythm in which 
devoting time to their children is a top priority. And of course that has to 
do with financial aspects sometime, but not always. What about women's 
autonomy in thinking? What about the pride that lives in being self 
sufficient for your baby? Hard to say, if those are societal aspects or 
personal ones... ;o)

> When the
> baby discovers that the bottle, the formula, the complementary food, the
> pacifier, or the thumb makes him or her feel OK, what does this mean for 
> the
> baby's devotion to breastfeeding? And we know that it's the baby who is
> responsible for keeping up milk production through the "demand and supply"
> system...

**I once had a mom who said that: "He prefers formula, so I have to quit 
bf!" Sorry for this mom, but that is pure rubbish. How can an infant that is 
only a few weeks old, know he prefers formula, especially when he's not 
being given any? That is a parent decision, not a baby's choice. Don't you 
think that a baby would always be instinctively devoted to bf, if the mother 
were...?

> " As the role of mothers gets re-defined in the context of
> changing economic and social patterns, it may seem that more and more 
> "other
> things the mother has to do" take priority over breastfeeding...and then
> breastfeeding gets into trouble.

**When it comes to financial aspects of women who have to work outside the 
home and cannot be with their infants and cannot pump either and simply 
*have* to work to sustain the family, I think it is true. But then again... 
the way society looks upon certain behaviors and choices is also being 
decided by the way society itself behaves. :-) It's a chicken-or-egg-story: 
what comes first? Society changes because some strong people make different 
choices or speak out loud about what they feel has a 
biologic/psychologic/social/emotional foundation (or the not so nice 
direction: turnover/power grounds).
Society often changes on important issues after a vanguard has been fighting 
for it for a long time, determined to set things in motion. I think we're in 
that front line, as far as bf is concerned, trying to get the whole flock 
along (to maintain a Christmas atmosphere... ;-)). But "hope is the last one 
to die", as a German saying goes... come one, come all, or at least many, in 
the long run!

I loved your way of looking at it, Chris; thank you!

Warmly,

Marianne Vanderveen, Netherlands

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