Full page article in today's issue of TIME worthy of all your attention:

"A Call To Nurse"
"For ARMY LIEUT. EMMA CUEVAS, there used to be nothing to compare with the
thrill of skimming the treetops of Panama at 160 mph in a 10 - ton, 50 ft.
Black Hawk helicopter.  That was before she discovered the slower-motion joy
of nursing her 21 lb., nine-month-old daughter Isabella.  Since then Cuevas
has twice asked the Army to let her leave the service, arguing that a pilot's
demanding schedule has made it impossible for her to breastfeed her daughter
properly.  The Army says no, explaining that Cuevas made a deal when she
bacame a cadet at West Point.  U.S. taxpayers spent $500,000 educating her at
the academy and at pilot training school in exchange for her pledge to stay
in uniform until May 2000.  In recent downsizing years, the Army has let many
in her 1993 class renege on that deal, but not the pilots.  That's because
when it comes to these soldiers, who are in short supply, the Army is holding
on just as tightly as Isabella.
    This week Cuevas' husband, Jeff Blaney, also a lieutenant, who graduated
from West Point the same year as his wife, plans to sue the Army on behalf of
Isabella in federal district court in Washington.  The draft of his complaint
asserts that his daughter is being denied nothing less than a "constitutional
right to breast-feed by having her mother impounded by the government."
 Attached affidavits from pediatricians say Isabella will grow up healthier
if she drinks her mother's milk until she is two.  Cuevas doesn't want her
baby drinking formula and is unable to pump enough breast milk to feed her."

It goes on to say when she has duty at night the baby cries for hours and she
joined the Army to "defend the country" but isn't willing to forsake her
child during peacetime.
 "The Army has a simple maternity policy: six weeks off and it's back to
work.  Unlike the Coast Guard, the Army does not give a new parent the option
of an unpaid leave. . . . .  . . .
Military officials say Cuevas' request is unprecedented, and fear that
granting it will seriously undermine the military's system of mandatory
commitments. Surprisingly, that's also the view of most of Cuevas' female
colleagues.  "Her selfishness," says Major Mary Finch, an Army helicopter
pilot who attended West Point a decade before Cuevas, "is a disgrace to women
in the military."  Finch too is married to an Army officer and is th mother
of two daughters ages five and three.  She breast-fed them during her six
weeks' maternity leave and then put them on formula.  "This is playing right
into the hands of those who believe there is a natural conflict between
motherhood and military service," Finch says.
    But Cuevas doesn't see it that way.  "Just as women deserve maternity
leave, they deserve to be able to feed their children," she says.  "The more
we sacrifice our families for the military, the weaker our families -- and
our country--become.". . . . .
(That is about 2/3 of the article)

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Jane