Had my first opportunity to push a little advocacy!

[~Nikki~]

My sister was visiting last night. Her and I have a fairly strained relationship at the moment, so I was trying to keep the conversations fairly low-key so that we wouldn't butt heads on anything. But eventually, my 8 month old crawled over and started diving at my boob - a clear sign he was ready for some milk. So as I latched him on, she asked me "Oh...you're breastfeeding him? How long do you plan on doing that?" So I mentioned to her that the C.P.S. (Canadian Pediatrics Society) recommends nursing up to 2 years and beyond, so obviously I won't wean before that. She nearly fell over, and said "Really??? They actually say that???" It turns out that a few of her peers who have had babies, are pretty uneducated about breastfeeding. Apparantly, when it's brought up in conversation, the general opinion is that it's "gross," and "pointless" and that "formula is so much better for the baby." I kind of laughed at the last one, when she mentioned it, and started listing off a million reasons why that statement was wrong. Shockingly....she agreed with me! She works in an institution where there is an entire department devoted to promoting breastfeeding, apparantly. And while she says she's never really paid attention to any of it, she agreed that "the government wouldn't pay all of these people to promote breastfeeding, if it was as crappy as my friends say it is."

She's still a couple of years away from having kids (she wants to wait until exactly 2 years after she's married, "y,know, so I'll have more stuff first"), but maybe our chat got some wheels turning in her head, and she'll start paying more attention to "the breastfeeding department."

[dziejen]

Hopefully your talk will open up her mind to bf and that will stay with her when she becomes a mom someday.

[MaryJaneLouise]

Good for you! at the "more stuff" comment.