>
> Jessica, forgive me as you will know your culture better than I do! But I
> live very near a sizeable community of orthodox Jews (in Gateshead,
> north-east England) , many of whom have large families as you describe. I
> am in touch with them, as until recently one of my trainees was from this
> community, and one of our a/n teachers is also. They also contact us for
> support and information from time to time.
>
> Our experience here is that generally, the mothers do breastfeed, but not
> 100 per cent successfully. They almost all start off bf, but according to
> my trainee, and my own conversations and observations, they start to pump
> very soon and give bottles of EBM, and then top up with formula very soon.
> Long-term unrestricted bf is very unusual - and the tendency is that the
> larger the family, the less time the baby gets on excl. bf....and the bf
> experience tends to worsen with the number of children  because of this,
> not  because of the age of the mother.
>
> My trainee bf all her children long-term and unrestrictedly, and at 40,
she
> had five children -  she was just not fertile enough to have more because
> of her bf . This was considered a small family in her community, and her
bf
> choice was, she told us, regarded as strange by many mothers.
>
> I would really welcome your comments on this.
>
> Heather Welford Neil
> NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK
>
We see the same in The Netherlands in the orthodox Reformed Christian
Communities. I've worked with some mom's who had lots of baby's because they
*had to* as the reverend told them it was written in the bible and they also
*had to* breastfeed them for the same reason, but they did not like either
one of the two. They subconsciously developped all kinds of *unresolvable
problems*, after which they could honestly tell *they really tried
breastfeeding, but it just did not work for them*.
I always felt sorry for these moms and babies, for motherhood is meant to be
a joy and not a burden or a sacrifice.

Gonneke van Veldhuizen, IBCLC, Maaseik, Belgium

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