This is not breastfeeding specific, so please feel free to skip if you like. This is in response to Katherine Dettwyler's comments about fee for service. Paying out of pocket is exactly what my husband and I did when we chose to work with midwives during the pregnancies and births of our two children. When we knew we would be getting ready to start a family, I checked into the health plans at my place of employment at the time, and none of them covered midwifery care. Once we knew insurance didn't cover it, we started saving. My husband and I had decided before we were even married that, should we ever have children, we would work with midwives and have home births (ultimately laboured at home and birthed in hospital with the first, had a home birth with the second). We also started saving for an unpaid maternity leave for our second shortly after I returned to work when our first was 3 months old. As we caluculated it, I could have 12 weeks paid leave if we wanted our second child in 2 years, but only if I took 3 paid days off during that time. Paid maternity leave could be up to 6 weeks sick time and the rest in earned time off. We decided holidays during our daughter's first 2 years were more important than full paid leave with the second. This experience with maternity leave made us think how employers could significantly impact family planning decisions should families be unable to save money as we were. I mean, I could have had 12 weeks paid leave with the second, and taken holidays, if we'd spaced out our children to 4 years instead of 2, but we wanted our kids 2 years apart. This is an issue I never read/hear about when maternity leave or family leave is discussed: how the current USA policies allow for family planning freedom only for those better off financially, at least with respect to obtaining paid maternity leave and child spacing. Wanda Mertick, RN, MN, IBCLC Port Matilda, PA *********************************************** 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