"And when breast-feeding doesn't come easily—an unusual but real occurrence"

Seriously?? I have never met a new mother that didn't have some type of difficulty early on. It is the rare mother and newborn combo that results in flawless breastfeeding right from the start. Yes, it's "natural" but so is walking and you have to struggle to learn how to do that as well. We do mothers a great disservice by telling them that the need to breastfeed, it's so important, etc but not providing support once they give birth.

It's little comments like these that make me wonder - is the author betraying a bias, showing that she really does think that all of the moms that cite difficulty as the reason that they don't breastfeed are full of it? Or am I being defensive and hypersensitive? Why, when it comes to our children are we so invested in what others think?

We're a social species, and raising kids is the most prosocial act out there. Wouldn't be a species without them. Pretty much everything we do of importance is learned by watching others, why not nursing? I kinda think every human culture is based, to a great deal, on being invested in what others in the culture think.

I agree with you that EB glosses over the difficulties both physiological and cultural that women have with nursing, and the importance of providing support to young mothers.

ditto

Maybe your bias is showing a little to much. This is a very important subject. One that has to do with our children. Why can't people just give it a try. I am one of the "lucky" ones with my 2nd child. He nursed perfectly from the beginning. My 1st born little girl was not so easy. But I kept with it and she nursed until she was 8 months old. Although it wasn't easy, I wouldn't have traded it for the world. Just because the going gets tough, us Americans think we have to just give up and find the easy way out. What about the people in other countries who don't have the option of formula, why aren't they given the resources to give up so easily? Our children only deserve the very best and it really is only one year, so lets stop sitting in judgement on everyone and just do the right thing for our kids.

I bit the hook for breastfeeding. Overall, I'm really glad I did, and I believe it helped my child's health. I experienced warm joyful embrace as well as sad divides between families that made different choices, among peers, between spouses, and between generations.

Along the way I met people who were gracious and thoughtful and wise, and people who were probably more technique or politics oriented or seeing life and breastfeeding and me and my choices through their own family-of-origin experiences. I brought my own skills and relationship to the world with me to the world of learning to breastfeed my baby.

I struggled with it and I exulted in it. For awhile, I drank too much soy milk from some mistaken idea of "good"=[more=better] for me. A quart a day, and box stuff--not the traditional complex process native to Asia--if you'd like to know! I ended up really imbalancing my calcium:magnesium:phosphorus ratio [soymilk was contributing more phosphorous to my physiology than I needed] and the resulting deficit in calcium may have put me over the edge in the PPD [Post Partum Depression] I also developed. It took getting to a nutritionist to identify that and to support me to make choices that would bring me back to balance and calm.

Thank god I didn't have to be responsible to wash and sterilize formula bottles. [Have you see my house?!] The range of feeding moms extended to others who firmly believed in, embraced and found no fault with the commercial product. And how sad it was to discover a nipple war and to find hurt and alienation was part of the choice making that we all do to feed our children.

I believe support is essential. Information and training. And that the mom shouldn't be a sole soul researching and searching for connection and the ins and outs of nursing or formula, an island in a sea of relatives who have no idea and no interest in learning anything. At a time when a woman may need support, emotional and physical, from accepting her wish--to being around to hold the babe in arms or coo--to errand running to help the mom navigate the bridges between the age-old needs of Everymom and the realities of modern life in suburbs and automobiles. And on.

Please keep the conversation going. Many of the women I met in my journey as a new mom had moms who had grown up in America in the 30's and 40's when mechanization, assemblylines and industry-oriented organization were heroines of modern life. Society and even hospital maternity floor architecture exaulted in these trends. Many moms, like mine, were told they didn't have enough milk to nurse. I wonder, by now, how many of the new moms have people who are close to them who have experienced nursing their babes?

The your side/my side divide I first met over nursing was the harbinger of the snack and lunch box divide, where just answering a colleague's query to tell what choices I made, seemed to offer criticism to the other mom for her alternate choosing. [Was it bias in my voice? Was it bias in her hearing?]

The more people engage in conversations and support for each other, the better we'll all do as parents, no matter what choices we make here. We have so much to accomplish to sew our society together in community and mutual support!