I feel that the idea that talking about breastfeeding makes bottlefeeding mothers feel guilt was born out of a natural desire to avoid anything that makes us uncomfortable, or inadequate. It is the same principle that makes me avoid pregnant women. Infertility and adoption brings with it a definite loss, of the pregnancy, birth, the baby's early days, often at least a partial control over feeding (having to supplement with formula when we would rather have nothing but breastmilk pass our babies' lips) etc.. For me, being with mothers who were pregnant or had recently given birth was painful, and i often avoided them. I think, with breastfeeding failure, it is less obvious what drives the avoidance behavior and people often misinterpret the discomfort that seeing someone else nursing a baby causes for them. This is especially true of my mother's generation. I have been able to engage my mother, and quite a few others, whose reactions to breastfeeding was generally negative, in a conversation about this, and found that they had made brief attempts to nurse their first babies, but had their efforts thoroughly sabotaged. I've assured them that hospital polices delaying first nursing, limiting nursing time, giving babies bottles of glucose water, etc., all worked against them, and that not many women would succeed under those circumstances. I have explained that they were not the ones who failed, but they WERE failed, by the doctors and nurses who should have known something and didn't, and seen alot of women breath a sigh of relief. My mother, for example, immediately became much more comfortable with my nursing Thomas and, where I had been too uncomfortable to ever nurse my first two in front of her, nursing Thomas in front of her was fine (until he was more than a year old, but that is another story). The idea that we should avoid educating women about breastfeeding, to avoid making bottle feeders feel guilty serves the formula companies very well, because it assures that there will always be lots of new moms around who have tried and failed at breastfeeding, for lack of information and support, and then struggle with conscious, or subconscious, feelings of inadequacy about it. Aloha, Darillyn _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] 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