Gail posted about whether "Babies love it" might not be the best sell.

Me, I'm coming back to good old fashioned guilt.

I've been thinking about it because of Barbara writing a week or so ago that
the number one reason to bf is that it is one of life's sweet pleasures.
This made me smile so much when I read it!

But I'm concluding that I disagree with it.  That is, yes, for me it is one
of life's sweet pleasures.   But I don't imagine that everybody finds
pleasure in all the same things I do.   And they don't have to.

But the increased mortality and morbidity associated with artificial feeding
isn't a matter of how somebody feels.  It isn't a lifestyle choice, that
you're allowed to make either way.    That's why Paula Meier's NICU has 100%
initiation:  because she says:   your baby needs you to do this, now, period.
 And they do it.

So when I talk now to women who aren't mothers yet, I say a slower and more
paced speech whose boiled down content is something like,

Look, everybody needs to make her own choices, and everybody has a lot of
issues.   But it's important that part of what you take into account is that
if you don't bf you put your baby at real increased risk not just for a
couple of ear infections, unpleasant as they may be, but for lifelong health
problems from asthma and diabetes to crohns and maybe leukemia, and god knows
what else that hasn't even been researched yet, not to mention the cognitive
deficits.   Personally I also find it really delightful, convenient, cheap,
and environmentally cool -- but even if I didn't find it lovely, I'd be very
very slow to decide NOT to do something if it was going to affect my baby
that way.

How effective this is, I can't say.   But it's what I'm working with right
now.   And I think if I were a pediatrician it would be a lot more effective,
because when I talked about health risk they would believe me more.

Elisheva

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html