This all leads me to wonder...when breastfeeding "promotion" began it wasn't 
really about what the "benefits" were. It seems to me it was more about 
relationship and feeding babies what nature had given them to grow on (a la 
LLLI). Then the scientific community begged for "evidence based medicine". So 
researchers have tried to supply that. What if there are some things that can't 
be measured? What about experiential evidence? Just because something 
doesn't have a statistical significance does that mean it has no value at all 
and should not be promoted?  What if it's not all about the milk but also about 
the experience (which of course is different for each dyad) Maybe the 
breastfeeding community needs to go back to promoting the relationship. I 
think that what happened is we all got so caught up in trying to promote bfing 
and increase statistics (initiation/duration etc) looking to those things as 
justification or validation that indeed everyone should breastfeed that maybe 
we started to overanalyze potential benefits when really that is not/should not 
be the motivating force. I thought someone had done some "research" on why 
women choose to breastfeed and it wasn't found to be due to health benefits 
anyway. The motivating factor in my WIC clinic in an informal survery was 
bonding. Just some rambling thoughts....

Ilene Fabisch, IBCLC/RLC
Gentle Beginnings Lactation Assistance
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