I just wanted to share a couple of incidences that happened this week that bolster my resolve to try even harder to educate those around me about the importance of breastfeeding. My daughter, who is a 3rd year Civil Engineering student, was at the mall with her four roommates. For some reason their conversation turned to breastfeeding and my daughter proceded to enlighted them on all the benefits and importance of breastfeeding(Taking her with me to the ILCA conference payed off--she didn't attend any sessions but we discussed breastfeeding alot on that trip). She was sharing with me about the discussion and said the girls had never before heard what she was telling them. They were then prompted to call their mothers at home and ask if they had been breastfed with the ones who were breastfed feeling pleased. I have to add that one of the benefits she told them about was the increase in IQ scores and they are all getting geared up for finals at Michigan State. So I don't know how many of those girls will breastfeed when their time comes but the seed has been planted. The other incident was with the staff nurses of the NICU where I work. We have been uncharacteristically slow and the nurses have had some down time. As I was talking with the nurses about non work related things, they began asking me breastfeeding questions mostly pretaining to themselves or a family member. Even though it was an informal unscheduled conversation about breastfeeding the questions kept coming and in a very nonthreatning open discussion I was able the give a mini inservice on how breastfeeding works for a healthy term baby and some of the difference between those babies and the preemies we work with. What I take away from these two happenings is that both formal and informal education of the public is so important and the more we can present breastfeeding, no matter who the audience is, the more we move to normalizing one of the most basic functions of life--feeding our offspring. Thanks for letting me share and philosophize Beth McLellan RN, IBCLC Sparrow Health System Lansing, MI *********************************************** 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(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html