With a little help from some friends

There you are: made all the right choices and stated off breastfeeding, cheered for it and encouraged by every-one, especially your HCP’s, and here you find yourself: crying baby, crying mother, cracked nipples and hurting breasts. Now where is that rosy picture of a happy mother with an all cream ‘n roses (cream ‘n chocolate if that's your variety) baby sitting on a pink cloud? And where are those cheering HCP’s? Is help underway? Many moms experience a tremendous pressure to breastfeed (you do want the best for your little one, now, don’t you!) , but feel abandoned, even betrayed, when it gets to putting advise into practice. They feel that they’d better not expect much from their HCP’s in terms of breastfeeding counseling: hardly correct to bad advices, not working tips and prescriptions and often the advice to top up with a bottle or completely wean to formula feeding. Moms would probably be better of wit help from other moms. Chapman et al studied and analyzed a bunch of studies on peer counseling and found that peer counselor help leads to more breastfeeding moms, more babies breastfeeding, and for longer and more exclusively, and even babies having less gut-infections. So count on your friends, especially friends who’ve ‘’been there, done that’’.  Friends help to reach your personal goals. And when breastfeeding is going well and you enjoy nursing your little one outdoors, don’t let anyone dare sending you to the bathroom: gather your friends and support each other.
Chapman DJ, Morel K, Anderson AK, Damio G, Pérez-Escamilla R: Review: Breastfeeding Peer Counseling: From Efficacy Through Scale-Up. J Hum Lact August 2010 26: 314-326, doi:10.1177/0890334410369481
The Milk Truck http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jillmiller/the-milk-truck
The Beatles: with a little help from my friends; http://youtu.be/i24mkN0ybZ8