>Bad analogy, sorry, Diane!
>
>What friends feel comfortable saying to each other is *different* 
>from a message to millions of people who are not friends.
>
>  A pregnant woman comes into the antenatal  clinic and says she eats 
>3 Big Macs a day, or lets  make it even worse,  washed down with 20 
>cigarettes and a snort of cocaine.
>
>Does her midwife say 'Oh,  no, do you know what that is *doing* to you?'

Heather -

By golly, you're absolutely right about how we approach a woman as a friend vs as a professional.  But you made me realize something else.  We don't come down hard on the hamburgers even as a friend *unless there's already a strong public awareness backing us up*.  It's absolutely not the *first* voice our friend hears on the subject.  We're just contributing a louder and more personal voice to a long-running background chorus.  And *that* may be why we need all sorts of approaches to an effective breastfeeding campaign.  Build up a tidal wave of information of all kinds from all directions, and friends *can* begin to say, "What?  Formula?  You're kidding, right?"  As things are, if we tried that even with a friend we'd just come across as weird:  "Oh, that's just Diane, on her soap box again".  Nope.  Doesn't work without the background chorus. 

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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