dear Kathleen et. al.,

my Best Friend the midwife had an unfortunate six weeks of excruciating pain
with her first child, and cannot be dissuaded from her feelings that this is
normal. as she does indeed know a lot about breastfeeding, she felt that she
had eliminated all possible causes of this pain. we have discussed this a few
times, because occasionally i don't get to see a Mother and Baby until quite
some time has gone by without calling me, because of this belief.

almost eighteen years after the fact, i could describe to her seven different
problems that might have caused her pain, just on first consideration. she had
not known about or tried to fix any of these things. but, even though she now
must admit that there may have been a reason for this problem, she is having
an extremely difficult time letting go of the entire concept of breastfeeding
being painful for long periods of time.  it is just as you describe; it seems
to invalidate her experience to claim it was not normal.

perhaps this idea is more pervasive than we would like to think, and that many
times when a mother complains of pain, she is simply told it is normal,
instead of being offered more help. one of the theories floating around here
last year was that pain was caused by being "fair-skinned." a more idiotic
theory than most, but extremely popular for a while. (what an insult to
rational thinking, i mean Really).

Carol b.