As an indication of how MN is these days, I am here with my disguise on...
.. and I just wanted to say I read CBC's book and it was enormously helpful to me.
ScottishMummy - I agree with you, wholeheartedly, but it was the standard bf advice that I found to be very "one size fits all" and it didn't fit me. I had horrendous problems getting bfing started and had to mix feed in the early days, on the advice of the hopsital bf counsellor and paedeatrician.
I read tons of advice at that time and her book was the only place that seemed to accept that problems could happen, that mixed feeding could happen and how to deal with it, that breast shaping, which finally did the trick for me, was something acceptable, and that bfing could bloody hurt. I was ready to scream with being told that if it hurt I was doing it wrong, and if my baby was lying on his back to feed that I was doing it wrong, and if I didn't offer both breasts I was doing wrong, when I was just delighted he was latched on at all.
For example I was told that if I held my breast I was doing it wrong, and to put my hand on my ribcage instead. I am currently sporting J cup breasts and hand on the ribcage is utterly pointless. I have to actively support my breast with my hand or DS can't get anywhere near my nipple, but I was repeatedly told by my HV that I was not to do it.
I find things that appear to say " everyone can do it, it's easy, all problems are you doing it wrong, it won't hurt, it you can't feed you're just not trying hard enough... to be very very demoralising.. and that's what I feel is coming through from the standard bf advice.
I found that a book accepting that it may not work for me was a much more sympathetic approach to what I was going through, and as I saw it, being told it was OK if it didn't work meant that I could keep trying without the pressure that I would feel like a guilty failure and bad mother if it didn't happen for me. It has a lot of commonsense in there rather than trying to fit everyone into a set of rules about how it had to be. FOr example, it was the only place I could find decent clear instructions for sterilising bottles and storing milk, which was important when you have to bottle feed a mix of formula and expressed milk. Every other book I read just seemed to assume that I wouldn't dare put a bottle near my baby.
I was also told that I was
8 months on I am still bfing very successfully, but I have broken nearly every one of the standard "rules" about bf to do it.
Sorry for the extended rant, but I get very upset about this. I feel that women should do what works for them in bfing if it is to be at all successful, and this author allowed me to do that, without the pressure and guilt that I felt from other sources.