Hi All,
      I agree that having a policy with the military and breastfeeding
would be of great benefit both to active duty military who are nursing
mothers and military spouses who are breastfeeding. The problem is a
many splintered thing - as I am sure that you have already gotten from
previous posts. First, a formal 'policy' would have to be done from the
Surgeon General (what about Healthy People 2000?!?) and then instituted
downward to all the military services and then downward more to all the
bases/posts and then downward (again!) to the hospitals. You can see
from just that, that the changes and personal modifications possible
could become unmanageable. That is the major problem with the military
system as it now sits, what is written in stone at the top, becomes so
clouded and circumvented or even ignored here, there and everywhere,
that situations that clearly violate the 'policy' exist and may never
even be punished, much less stopped.
    When you add to it, breastfeeding is still seen as a 'personal'
choice, especially among the men on high who are in charge of the
military (and even some of the women high up there too) - it is going to
be a long haul to even get a 'policy' in place for the military services
much less get them enforced.
    Here, I have gone back and forth on support and non supportive HCPs,
and consider what little I have right now as a blessing. I would like to
do much more, both at the local military hospital and the local civilian
hospital, but there just aren't even hours in the day or enough of me to
go around. When you add what I am doing in LLL (above and beyond the
Group), my personal education to further this into a paying career
rather than an expensive hobby, and do I want to consider adding a
writing campaign to Washington to promote breastfeeding?  Morally, yes -
realistically, no I can't right now.
    The military issue is similar to the employed mother issue and the
mother in the hospital situation issue, when women stand up for what
they want, perservere inspite of obstacles against them or insist that
something change ('the squeaky wheel gets the oil') then things may
begin changing. It is the nursing mothers themselves who will get the
policies changed from the hospitals to the boardrooms to the military.
With support and information from us, 'in the know,' these women can do
it. We know that there are moms out there who have or are facing some
high obstacles and still perservere, but I feel many of them are just
too exhausted from their own personal fights to go further.

Oops . . . when did I get on my soapbox?  Sorry.

Leslie Ward
Vine Grove, KY
"No one else can represent your conscience." Anishinabe proverb