Oh, boy – what a nightmare for your friend.

Thoughts:

Can she get a copy of the medical reports from both of the mental health 
programmes that have seen him? This could be important evidence in 
showing a) that his issues are *not* due to the extended BF'ing, and b) 
that there are suspicions that dad may not be the best one to have 
custody. (I'd go lightly on that because throwing a lot of blame around 
in custody cases can be a case of mud sticking – if your friend gets too 
accusatory it could make her look bitter and vengeful, which would 
backfire badly – but, if the mental health programmes felt there were 
concerns about dad's treatment of baby then it's definitely worth 
mentioning this.)

What does the ped actually advise as far as vaxing is concerned? Is it 
mom, dad, or both who've been refusing to give consent for vaxing?

Has mom got any evidence that dad initially agreed to the extended 
BF'ing – did they ever discuss it in writing at any point, or in front 
of witnesses who might remember? If it can be shown that they both 
agreed, it makes it harder for him to spin it as just her being crazy.

Kathy Dettwyler has a standard letter for courts at 
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detletter.htm which is overall very good, 
but unfortunately has a major error in the fourth paragraph – her claim 
that 'all of the research that has been conducted on the health and 
cognitive consequences of different lengths of breastfeeding shows 
steadily increasing benefits the longer a child is breastfed up to the 
age of 2 years' simply isn't true (several such studies have shown that 
the benefits level off after a certain point and that breastfeeding for 
longer doesn't add anything extra in the way of benefit). While this is 
a) irrelevant to the main point, namely that breastfeeding for longer 
isn't *harmful*, and b) probably not going to be a problem to your 
friend's case since it's unlikely that any lawyer is going to become 
acquainted enough with the literature to dig out the cases that prove 
her wrong on that point, it's still something that *could* blow a major 
hole in her credibility if anyone did pick up on that incorrect 
statement during the court case. You might want to use an edited version 
that leaves out that claim, because some of the things she says *are* 
definitely worth putting forth. Also, of course, she quotes the AAP and 
the AAFP supporting extended b'fing as entirely harmless, and those are 
two authorities well worth quoting in the case, since it's hard to claim 
that something endorsed by the AAP is harmful.

Oh, yes – that page of Dettwyler's also links to a page of resources 
from Kellymom for this sort of situation, but I haven't checked that out 
and don't know whether it's any good.

Best of luck,

Sarah Vaughan



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