Just some random thoughts on the education aspect you mentioned Kelly.

*There needs to be a uniform, centralised means of advising pregnant women of the resources available to them if they run into problems breastfeeding. This should be as far as it goes with pregnant women because for the most part everyone thinks they won't have problems and everything will be fine for them - so it all goes in one ear and out the other anyway (a bit like the c/section information at antenatal classes). Women should not be scratching around the phonebook with a screaming baby that hasn't slept for two days trying to find where "Lactation Consultant" is listed in the yellow pages as I had to

*The ABA needs to get more realistic with it's education. It needs to acknowledge to women that while breastfeeding is a natural function, it's almost never easy at first. They need to acknowledge that sometimes it hurts like hell. That sometimes you will go days without sleep because the baby won't take a bottle of ebm so no one else can feed him. They need to acknowledge that while in a perfect world mum's could feed without discrimination in public, every breastfeeding mother can tell you a horror story of at least one thing that's happened to her when she DARED to get her boob out at the local shopping centre. I could go on here but you know what I mean. Let's talk about the realities and how to cope with them, rather that fluffing on about how "wonderful" breastfeeding is. Yes it is wonderful, but for many mums it is not at first and no wonder they feel ripped off, or like there must be something wrong when all they hear is this fluffy b/s from the only support organisation that they can access for free.
I think the ABA does good work for the most part but in all my dealings with them I felt they really minimised my issues by talking to me in terms like I've described above.

*When we talk about breast milk being the best thing for baby, we imply the artificial milk is the norm and breastmilk is "a step up from that". This makes artificial milk a more palatable substitute. When we really look at it, breastmilk is the norm, which makes anything less than that a poorer substitute. I think there really needs to be more of a focus on the "human milk for human babies" aspect, that shows that breastmilk is the NORMAL thing to be feeding babies, not that it's some holy grail that only some women can produce in satisfactory quality and quantity. The language needs to change, they're coming at this the wrong way I think.