Elisheva says:
>I guess that's why I am impatient with, say, Heather's really strongly
>principled objection to numbers.   Yeah, they're bad.  But the alternatives
>so often seem worse.   What we need to do, IMO, is teach BETTER numbers  --
>get better accreditation -- to people who start off clueless.  Then, when
>they reach the really advanced stage and already have some built in intuition
>about numbers not being the be-all and end-all, that can be the time to treat
>those numbers, those accreditations, as "just the beginning."   That way we
>can avoid making the perfect into the enemy of the good.


Hey I'm not that much of an anarchist! : )))) LOL

Some numbers are necessary (like the baby who seems to be feeding ok and
often, and still doesn't gain weight  - I just spoke to a mother in this
situation today. The only thing 'wrong' is the fact her baby's now *losing*
weight, after an okay  first couple of weeks.   She's going to see the
doctor).

But I would think of things the other way round. Teach normal, happy,
healthy, physiological breastfeeding and how to recognise it *without*
numbers, or only the very most basic ones, like the fact we'd expect a
weight gain, and what the range expected would be. Then, when you have a
good grasp of this, and you can get to the advanced stage of talking
numbers so you have a good context to put these numbers in.

Numbers given to the clueless-about-bf are really dangerous...that's how we
got into our  modern-day  bf  mess in the first place.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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