Carrie:   Right, that is true.  That is something that you will experience when you are out and about with your nursing and, say, you will have woman approach you.  I have had that happen so many times, "Oh, I miss those days."  I have only had one negative experience ever with breastfeeding in public, but I have had many, many, many positive experiences, so I know that things are changing. 

Oh, but I remember what I was going to say about schools.  When we talk about mammals, we need to remind people, children, that a cat or a dog does not worry whether she is going to have enough milk.

Amy Spangler:  Yes, you are right.

Carrie: She just nurses the babies when they want to.

Amy Spangler:  And they all have multiple babies!

Carrie:  Yes, but she does not ever worry about her milk supply.

Amy Spangler:  I find it interesting that we are supposed to be the most intelligent of the mammal species and yet we are the one with the greatest amount of doubt and insecurity about our ability to do what should be very basic body functions.

Carrie:.  Yeah, it comes from that huge intellect that we have.

Amy Spangler:  Yes, maybe we think too much?

Carrie:  We do.  We think too much.  We do not feel enough and we do not rely on our instinct enough.

Amy Spangler: I used to think as a lactation consultant and a nurse, is there a point where we worry too much about the guilt issue and how it is going to make someone feel and if the price we have to pay is someone feeling guilty in order to promote something that saves lives maybe that is a fair tradeoff, but deep down inside I want to believe that we can do both.  We can sell breastfeeding in a manner in which it should be sold as optimal activity for every mother and not make those mothers who choose not to breastfeed feel badly about that decision.  I think we can find a happy meeting point.  I just think we need to continue to work on that.

Carrie:    Yes.  Well, Amy, it has been a pleasure talking with you.

Amy Spangler:     Carrie, you also.  You are just a delight.  My reassurance and hope for the future is always reinforced when I talk to young mothers with babies that are being breastfed well beyond those early weeks and hopefully well into that into the first year and into the second and who knows how far beyond because you are really the model of what we want other moms to be able to follow and have a comfort level with.

Carrie: Well, one mother can change the future of the world because of the way that she parents her children.  I had a funny experience at a restaurant one time, my 5‑year‑old who was 4 at the time he saw a grandmother bottle-feeding an infant and my children cannot keep their hands off of babies.  If they see a baby anywhere they are just right there oohing and cooing over the baby, but Julien looks up at me and he goes "Mommy, what is that lady doing to that baby?"  "I suppose she is feeding the baby."  He goes "What is that thing?"  It was so out of his…

Amy Spangler:    It was so foreign to him.  I love it.

Carrie:  It was so foreign that he had absolutely no idea that that was a bottle and that she was feeding the baby and so I had to explain that some mommies give their babies milk from their mimmies and some mommies give their baby milk in a bottle, but that one thing just illustrates that his perspective is that breastfeeding is normal.  Anyway, we could go on and on for hours…

Amy Spangler:  You are right and hopefully both of us will be around long enough to see the day come where maybe it will be a bottle-fed baby on a cover of a magazine and it will incite such commentary that people will say, "Oh yeah, you're right.  We probably shouldn't have done that."

Carrie:  Well Amy you have a wonderful day.

Amy Spangler:  Carrie, thank you.  You take care.