Nancy,

An illustration of how important the grandparents' influence can be is
the fact that mothers often do better at establishing breastfeeding if
Grandma stays away for a while.

That was helpful for me in getting a full-time nursing relationship
established with my third adopted child.  With the first two, I had only
nursed with the Lact-Aid on a part time basis for the first few months.
One of the many reasons was that my mother came to help shortly after
the babies arrived.  Since, like most mothers of her era, she bottle
fed, she was not only unknowledgable about breastfeeding, but seemed
threatened by it, as if my desire to do so was a commentary on the way
she had raised me.  Because of this, I never nursed in front of her.

When we adopted our third son, my husband was stationed in Germany.  We
had not anticipated being able to adopt a baby over there, so it was a
big surprize.  My mother did not get over there to see him until he was
four months old, by which time he was an avid nurser, I was producing a
substantial amount of breastmilk, and I was comfortable nursing in front
of people and skilled at nursing discretely.  There were several things
that I feel helped me to be able to do so much better nursing him than I
had with our first two, but I'm afraid one of the most important was not
having my mother around during the time that we were getting our nursing
relationship firmly established.

My story is not unique.  There were many American mothers in Germany who
successfully breastfed after having been unsuccessful with previous
attempts.  Since all of the grandmothers were in the States they either
did not come to Germany at all, or did not get there for at least a
month after the baby was born.  Not everyone said specifically that the
absence of Grandma made a difference in their ability to establish
breastfeeding, but I think it was a factor in many cases.  In our church
there, the kitchen, where everyone went to nurse, looked like a La Leche
League meeting every Sunday and bottle-feeding mothers were few and far
between. It was kind of like being in a dream!

I think this is a great subject for an article.  One of the reasons
there is such big need for lactation specialists these days is that so
few new mothers can look to their own mothers for support and advice.

Aloha,
Darillyn