Do not assume that I or anyone else could have helped this mother.  You
could not breastfeed for her, nor could any of us.  She had to do that. She
chose not to.  Why?  Perhaps it was the culmination of "holiday stress"
which I see a great deal of in November and December each year. Perhaps she
was less committed to begin with than you thought. Perhaps she wanted to
emulate what "her friend" enjoyed, but decided she was not her friend and
thus did not need to continue. There are myriad explanations for her
behavior.  I saw nothing in your description that suggested you missed
anything.  What this mother probably needed more than anything was someone
in her home to help her with everything else so that she could concentrate
on being a new mother.  I do not know if she had such assistance; if she is
a typical US mother with a new baby, chances are she was alone (even if her
parents/in-laws/spouse were living in the home) with her fears and
attitudes, and expectations of breastfeeding.

Love yourself. You offered appropriate help. Until LCs are willing and able
(and allowed!) to breastfeed their client's babies for them, this sort of
thing is going to continue.  You did not do this to her.

Should you decide to do so (or she calls you back), you might encourage her
to bottle-feed the baby as if she were breastfeeding (always in arms,
snuggled in, etc).  She may find a bit later that she misses breastfeeding
more than she thought and wants to go back to it. This has happened fairly
often with the clients I figured had also stopped.  We can never know
exactly what makes women do what they do, though we can surmise... Remain
open to any clues she offers and let her know that you will support
whatever she chooses to do.

And... welcome to the reality of (unnecessary) weaning in the LC business.



"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
WEB PAGE: http://www.telcomplus.com/~kga/lactation.html
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