Dear alll:

I am both specifically responding to Brenda and communally responding to the rest of you that I myself have spouting things I believed to be true many times over and then had some gem on Lactnet adjust my viewpoint.  I am sure I have used the dessert model in the past.  Just some little light bulb went off in my head this time, when it had not those many many times in the past when I heard the dessert model.  

I think it was because Kathleen Rasmussen  did such an excellent job at buildin the case for the public health problem that maternal obesity poses for mothers and their infants and how much MORE important it is for obese women to breastfeed because formula dramatically increases their risk of postpartum weight retention.  Here in New York City 42% of elementary school children are overweight or obese.  So, it has been on my mind.  And perhaps Manhattan is different in this, I do find that I see a fair number of women with eating disorders.  

About 11 years ago, my mentors actually were seeing the tail end of women who had parents who were Holocaust survivors and they often had issues surrounding eating because of the severe restrictions their parents had undergone.  I should make it clear, I do not see overt limitations of the infants feed, but a more subtle inability of the mother to read the hunger cues as such.  There is always a fiercely defended reasons OTHER than hunger for the baby's behavior.  Its a very complex area.  Often these women will drift from lactation consultant to lactation consultant and other health care practitioners to find someone who will validate that really their baby is getting enough when the opposite is true.  The severe cases ARE rare, but I guess I was thinking of them and their reaction to the term dessert.

How many terms and ideas have I rethought thanks to Lactnet?  Many!!  I now talk about breastfeeding as normal and compare all other modes to breastfeeding, not the other way around.  I would have never thought of that on my own without Lactnet.

So, Brenda, I was thinking of the idea of "dessert" not that you personally used the same term I had been using for many years myself.  It is a shifting in my viewpoint about the word. So please don't feel pounded down and don't be afraid to emerge from lurkdom.  

Best, Susan Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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