Dear Lactnet Friends: Thank you Kika, for clarifying the original statement. For the mothers not having pain, it doesn't matter about the attachment. For the mothers having pain, there is more going on. In those cases, a thorough assessment is required. Sometimes the solution to the mothers pain is to adjust the attachment and positioning. Sometimes there are other things going on; we can make a long list. For example; things can look perfectly fine and the baby transfer no milk at all; thank goodness for pre/post feed weights We have learned to change the attachment and positioning over decades of giving breastfeeding help. While there is no research to say that this is always the definitive cause of pain, there is enough experience for us to start there. Breastfeeding has never been a visual art. We have to start somewhere, when a mother is having problems. We start with the obvious. If changing positioning and attachment don't work, we keep looking for the reasons for the pain. After thorough assessment, we can find pain from nipple skin infections, or capillary spasms, or babies with TOT, or subluxation of vertebrae, a history of abuse, or a variety of things. For a long time, when breastfeeding was being resurrected into the mainstream in the 1950s, women were using their breasts like bottles....and new mothers were told that "it hurts for 2 or 4 or 6 weeks"....and then the baby would have grown big enough or mom would have figured out a way so that it didn't hurt anymore. (Kay Hoover shows a photograph of herself breastfeeding her newborn with a terrible position and laughingly admits that it hurt for weeks.) The thought in those days was that it was the length of time at breast that caused pain. It wasn't until the late 1970s/early 1980s, when Kittie Frantz and Carol L'Esperance published an article (1978? 1983?. . or maybe both) that identified pain as the result of positioning that our views started to shift. Nowadays, we have laid-back breastfeeding, written about by Suzanne Colson, and before then, the door opened with Lennart Righard's research (1990) that led to Kittie Frantz and Ann Marie Widstrom both releasing videos about delivery self-attachment. We realized that newborns do have abilities and skills. Before then, newborns were not considered to be able to do anything. (Although Ann Marie Widstrom was gathering her data about the newborn's abilities starting in the late 1970s in Sweden.) Before that change, breastfeeding was considered to be the mother's sole responsibility: she had to hold her baby and her breast a certain way, and sit a certain way for breastfeeding to work. Now, thank goodness, we know that babies know more about breastfeeding at birth than do their mothers. This is my view of breastfeeding history. .. .feel free to correct, all you wonderful Lactnetters. (Why was Sweden was ahead of everyone in this regard. . .because Sweden had a midwifery model of care, and the US model of care was physician dominated? Oh, Marden Wagner, what would you have said?) warmly, -- Nikki Lee RN, BSN, Mother of 2, MS, IBCLC, CCE, CIMI, ANLC, CKC, RYT Reviews Editor,* Clinical Lactation* www.nikkileehealth.com *Communications are confidential and meant only for whom they are addressed.* *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome