Here in Honduras, people and hospitals are very poor in
 general and we never even think of spending the money and the scarce staff
 time it would take to do gift packs.  We're lucky if we even have any
 written materials to give away.

 I don't think that mothers  breastfeed just because we give her a "gift
 pack" -- I don't think it works that way -- however, if we put some energy
 into making sure she DOESN'T get the OTHER kind of gift pack -- then that
 ought to have a positive effect on breastfeeding. >>

Dear Judy,  I can see that all the gift pack ideas don't apply in Honduras,
but they do where I live.  The mothers get armloads of gift packs from at
least 2 or 3 sources in all of the local hospitals.  They get samples of baby
soap, laundry soap, disposable diapers, consmetics for mom, babu club info
from the formula companies(and when they join they get more advertising from
the companies), diaper bags and cooler carriers "for breastfeeding moms"
 full of formula and TONS and TONS of formula coupons.  They are heavily
influenced by all this advertising and of course have that formula "just in
case" they have a bad night with the baby.  Now tell me truly, who hasn't had
a bad night or two with a new baby?  These American moms are the ones who
want the McBirth, and the McBaby, and think they might "try" to breastfeed.
 But 'Hey' if it doesn't work out formula's OK doncha know?  IF we can give
them a couple of weeks of breastfeeding, some of them will actually fall in
love with breastfeeding and find all the joy there is in it.  So please bear
with us on this subject for a little while and be thankful that is not a
problem in your area.
I am not advocating that mothers will breastfeed because of gifts, but the
gifts they are getting here in the U.S. surely are hurting our statistics.

Jane