Hi All,
I have both professional and personal experience with this topic.  I won't
bore you with the details, but to make a long personal story short, I
finally had to tell my mother that if she couldn't be supportive of my
struggling to bf (with my 2nd son...most of you know my "BF Hell" story...it
is in the archives in 1995 or 1996 if you don't know the story) that I
didn't want any contact with her at all.  It was too difficult for me to do
what I needed to do without her telling me all the time how I should just
stop and put Ben on ABM (which he was terribly allergic to!).

In the professional setting, when I have seen that the family is
unsupportive, I try to get a good feeling for how determined the new mom is.
Sometimes they just cannot withstand family pressure and the best you can do
is support them until they give up.  Very hard to do...

If the new mom is determined, then I will gently suggest that they tell
their family that BF is something that they really wnat to do, they ARE
going to do, and that nothing they say will change their minds.  Sometimes
the moms will tell thier families that if they are unsupportive of BF, that
BF is an "off-limits_ topic of discussion.  I offer suggestions of good
books for the family to read, and also refer the mom to LLL.
  I also let the moms know that sometimes the negative BF support can stem
from personal issues of the other person, or depending on thier ethnicity,
discuss how "we Americans are so great" in other ethnicities eyes (I don't
know why...) that they feel they must abandon their own beautiful history of
BF for the ABM.

Sometimes they make it sometimes they don't.  If they contiue BF for even a
week, I figure they did great, because it is REALLY HARD to succeed at
anything when those around you offer NO support.  (Been there...Done that a
thousand times...)

Hope this helps,

Jay
Jay Simpson, CLE
Sacramento (State Capital), California, West Coast, USA
"No Miracles performed here, just a lot of love and hard work."