Rachel, your comments remind me of a time at a La Leche League meeting where 
we were discussing starting solids, and one mother said her doctor had told 
her she should start her four-month-old on solids right away. She named the 
doctor, and I was shocked - it was my very good friend Joyce who I KNEW 
would never tell someone to start solids at 4 months. I called Joyce the 
next day and said (jokingly) "are you telling people to start solids at 4 
months now?" She started to laugh and said "I know exactly who you have been 
talking to - I kept telling her that her baby did not need solids yet and 
she kept saying 'but it wouldn't really hurt to start now, would it? I mean, 
lots of people give their babies cereal at 4 months" and finally I said that 
if she really, really wanted to offer the baby some cereal it probably 
wouldn't do too much harm." To the mother, that somehow translated as "the 
doctor told me to give solids now."

On the other hand, I've also been present when people have said some pretty 
horrendous things. When my grandson was born eight weeks prematurely, I 
walked with my daughter-in-law to the nursery (where he had been taken 
because he was having trouble breathing). As we walked over to the little 
incubator where he lay, the nurse came up to my daughter-in-law and said 
"Now, people may be pressuring you to breastfeed, but you should know that 
breastfeeding is not the best thing for a premature baby." My 
daughter-in-law said to her "Um, have you met my mother-in-law? She may want 
to discuss that with you."

Teresa Pitman 

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