Someone wrote (with reference to including adverts for day care centers in
an alternative gift pack): "It isn't bf friendly to promote daycare."

Many women in the US go back to work and put their children in day care.  It
does them and their children a disservice to perpetuate the idea that you
can't breastfeed unless you stay with your children 24 hours a day.  All
over the world, and throughout human prehistory and history, women have
worked inside and outside the home and had help from others caring for their
children and still managed to breastfeed them for years and years.  It would
be great if day care centers in a city could be certified as "breastfeeding
friendly" -- with comfortable places for moms to sit and nurse, proper
facilities for storing breast milk, and a willingness to cooperate with
breastfeeding moms, handle breast milk, etc.  And some day care centers are
NOT breastfeeding friendly at all.  So find ones that are, and encourage
them to advertise themselves and their breastfeeding friendly policies, in
an advert to go in an alternative gift bag.

You don't have to stay with your baby 24 hours a day in order to breastfeed
for many years.  This is a pernicious belief that many women have, and it
leads to comments like "I'm not going to breastfeed because I'll have to go
back to work in 6 weeks anyway, so why bother."  Or "I'm only going to
breastfeed for 6 weeks, because then I have to go back to work."  It is
quite possible to combine paid work outside the home, and the child in a day
care center, with breastfeeding.

Check the archives for more discussion on alternative gift packs.  Somewhere
in there I have a description of the ones put together by the Healthy
Mothers/Healthy Babies Coalition of Bryan/College Station, Texas -- probably
5 years ago by now.  They include little sample tubes of Lansinoh,
refrigerator magnets from the department of health, etc.

Kathy Dettwyler


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