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Subject:
From:
Cathy Bargar <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:33:59 -0400
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Liz, you've done everything you can do and then some. Please don't take it
personally! Sounds to me like this woman is, as you said, very used to being
in charge and being able to control her life and environment, which now of
course includes a newborn. I've found over many years of working with all
kinds of women that these women are among the hardest to "satisfy", and I
find it very frustrating too. They are the ones most likely to consult an LC
in the first place (not a bad thing!), but also tend to have read a lot and
to have consulted a variety of "experts". Also not a bad thing, but it seems
to me that this often makes it harder on the women themselves - not to
mention their babies and their LCs!; they approach raising the baby the same
way they would approach a big new project at work, and, as we all know,
babies don't operate that way!

Many of the things that work well in the corporate world just don't prepare
you well for nurturing a newborn. In the "real world", one is rewarded for
being able to control a situation by use of logic, rationality, planning
skills, and intellectual preparation. Well, babies don't know that - they
operate totally on the immediate, the instictive and the spontaneous, and
there's absolutely no reasoning with them or trying to control them. They're
just there, needing what they need right then, and there's not much you can
do about it. Must be frustrating to a person used to operating in a
different mode entirely! (I wouldn't know, since I'm kind of a big baby
myself!)

Anyway, I've learned to not let this kind of thing bother me so much. The
first thing I learned as a brand new nurse was to offer myself with a kind
of humility (not easy - I'm not a humble kind of girl), to just kind of give
myself over to what my patient (or client) needed and to try to not intrude
myself much into that place. I just try to remind myself "it's not about
me"; sometimes it's not easy, but I still work at it all the time, and I
find that it does keep me from brooding over the question of "why didn't she
just listen to me and do what I told her?". (I get lots of practice - Diane
W. is the only other LC in private practice in our town!)

Cathy Bargar RN IBCLC Ithaca NY

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