Af­ter read­ing Dr David Bratt's ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled Breast­feed­ing and Obe­si­ty in the T&T Guardian of Au­gust 9, I felt com­pelled to write this let­ter to high­light some of the ob­sta­cles a breast­feed­ing moth­er can face and pro­vide some so­lu­tions. Among oth­er things, Bratt's ar­ti­cle out­lined ways for hos­pi­tals to en­cour­age moth­ers to breast­feed their ba­bies. Be­ing a young (less than 30) work­ing moth­er of two chil­dren (aged two years and three months), I have found that sup­port, knowl­edge, per­son­al choice and de­ter­mi­na­tion are nec­es­sary for suc­cess­ful breast­feed­ing. With many things, the first time around isn't easy. With breast­feed­ing, not on­ly is the first time not easy, but al­so the first week and it's very tempt­ing to just give up. This is where the sup­port comes in. Sup­port from your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er and fam­i­ly.

Many young moth­ers to­day are al­so work­ing moth­ers. Af­ter the ma­ter­ni­ty leave is over, the ba­by is on av­er­age two-and-a-half to three months old. Sup­port is now need­ed from the em­ploy­er and co-work­ers, in ad­di­tion to the fam­i­ly. In my sit­u­a­tion, there is no fa­cil­i­ty to sup­port the ex­press­ing of milk at work, not even a sick bay. For­tu­nate­ly, in both cas­es, I had/have a male man­ag­er with chil­dren, who un­der­stands the im­por­tance of a moth­er's milk and al­lows me to use his of­fice. I al­so have co-work­ers who have been ed­u­cat­ed from my ex­pe­ri­ences and of­fer their sup­port, as they are a young group of women who have not yet had the ex­pe­ri­ence of moth­er­hood.

I find it nec­es­sary to ex­press milk dur­ing the day, in or­der to pro­vide for the fol­low­ing work day, when ba­by is not with me. As Bratt men­tioned, breast milk is made on de­mand-if ba­by is not do­ing the stim­u­la­tion, some­thing else must or the milk "dries up," as we say. Gin­ger and saf­fron tea comes to my res­cue when this be­gins to hap­pen. It kept me go­ing 14 months with my first ba­by and keeps me go­ing now. There are many places one can ac­quire in­for­ma­tion on breast­feed­ing. Most of my knowl­edge came dur­ing my first preg­nan­cy. There is an abun­dance of books and Web sites about preg­nan­cy, child­birth and breast­feed­ing.

Pre-na­tal class­es at Mam­a­to­to Re­source and Birth Cen­tre in Bel­mont, along with brochures from TIBS in St Clair, were in­valu­able. Both or­gan­i­sa­tions al­so pro­vide sup­port, by way of sup­port groups. Re­al ex­pe­ri­ences shared by oth­er young moth­ers add prac­ti­cal­i­ty to the the­o­ry. Breast­feed­ing is a per­son­al sac­ri­fice for the well-be­ing of your ba­by. It's not easy to have a so­cial life, with an ever-chang­ing bust line that tin­gles every two hours.

You're anx­ious to lose the weight and wear the tight-fit­ting clothes, but you have to make sure that your top al­lows you to nurse when ba­by's ready. It can all get tire­some and frus­trat­ing. But when you are de­ter­mined and have re­al­ly set your mind to do­ing this, you can adapt. The so­cial ac­cep­tance, or lack there­of, of a moth­er pulling out her breast to feed her ba­by is an­oth­er hin­drance to breast­feed­ing. I have some­what mas­tered the art of hid­ing with a tow­el or blan­ket. While I agree that the hos­pi­tals and oth­er birth places have a vi­tal role to en­cour­age breast­feed­ing, I say the moth­ers them­selves need to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on ed­u­cat­ing them­selves and then mak­ing a well-in­formed choice.

C Ga­jad­har

Cou­va