Re women "not believing" what we tell them (specifically: "waiting till the
milk comes in" before putting baby to breast): "...just to point out how it
alone can't overcome 20 or more years of other input she has received before
coming in contact with us."

I always think of it this way: What would *I* do, if I were in that other
woman's country, and I was told by doctors or nurses or anyone else to do
something I "knew" was not right? Especially if my mother and my aunts and
my grandmothers and everyone else had always shown me otherwise?

If I gave birth in a country where, for example, it is believed that there's
"no milk" for the first few days, or that colostrum was "bad" for the baby,
and everybody around me was telling me to wait till my "milk came in", I
would smile politely, nod my head, and do exactly what I "knew" was
correct - i.e. put the baby to breast as early and as often as possible. I'd
probably even do it secretly, if necessary.

Even women in our own country, born & raised speaking the same language, can
be from very different cultures, and it's only natural that we will continue
to regard what the "other" says, regardless of their degree of expertise, as
being suspicious at best and outrageous at worst. And it's way too arrogant
for me to assume that I, as an educated middle-class white woman, RN & IBCLC
notwithstanding, *know* all there is to know of importance even in my own
field. We *think* we know an awful lot, but there's always more or different
ways of looking at things.

Esp. w/BFing - if it were such a fragile and scientific mechanism that it
had to be done by one set of rules, we would have all died out long before
now!

Cathy BArgar, RN, IBCLC
Ithaca NY

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