There's a flip side to the notion of "committed" moms: I'd worked by phone with a LLLL in pain, and we hadn't come to a resolution before I had to leave on vacation. So I referred her to an excellent LC who saw her in person, got it fixed, and reported back to me. The other LC kept saying, in admiration, "she was so committed to breastfeeding," and it didn't sound right to me so I started thinking about it. One of the mental "tests" I sometimes apply is, "What if it were about this woman losing a leg, or her vision - something we *all* consider critically important? Would she/we behave the same way?" Would a doctor ever say, in admiration, "She was so committed to eliminating that brain tumor"? For this LLLL, it was way past "feeling committed"; losing bfing would mean losing her very pattern of self. There is a group of women for whom "committed" is too tentative a word. They're the ones who are a total joy to work with because they come to us saying, essentially, "I'm going to be breastfeeding. Can you help me make it go more smoothly?" With oh so many others I feel like a car repairman who's being asked not only to repair the car (within a time frame) but also to convince the owner that the car's worth keeping in the first place. How many of us have had clients fly to California or England (or Toronto :-) ) for world-class breastfeeding help, the way people will fly to save a liver? "I'm committed to bfing" says to me, now that I think about it, that she has considered the alternative and rejected it... for now. It would have been refreshing - and more accurate - for that LC to have said of the LLLL, "She couldn't not breastfeed." Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL Ithaca, NY *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html