A few years ago I had an experience of how some words said, almost stopped
mom from breastfeeding.
I met a husband of a patient of mine who just had her first baby. He had
just brought his wife and baby home from hospital, and was on his way to
buy ABM (I usualy tell my patients there is no need to get this for their
newborns). I was surprised, and he explained that in hospital his wife was
told that she has a big baby (4 kg), and she won't have enough milk, and
the nurse "even showed them there was no milk by trying to express some
milk, and there was nothing". I went over to their home, and there was a
lovely baby, sleeping well, after nursing. Later I watched her nurse, and
everything was fine. The mother still didn't beleive me. I came back the
next day, the baby had nursed well, slept well, had full diapers, but the
mother told me again how the nurse didn't get even one drop of milk from
her breasts. I then expressed some milk from her (with her permission, of
course), and the milk squrirted out beautifully. The mother was amazed
"This didn't hurt!". It then turned out the nurse in hospital had just
squeezed her breast forcefully, (not at all like expressing milk),hurt the
mom, and of course gotten no milk. Only after SEEING the milk she finally
believed me, and from then on no more problems. She nursed for more than a
year, the same with her second baby, and she is soon expecting her third,
and is of course planning to bf.

If I hadn't by chance met her husband when I did, she probably would have
gone on to beleive that she can't produce milk, as she was told in hospital.

Mira Leibovich, MD