Thanks for a lovely new word Diane. I agree that the health professions see
breastfeeding in an iatrocentric fashion, but to be fair, the ten steps were
created to make hospitals as they are an environment more conducive to
breastfeeding, which explains and justifies their iatrocentric perspective
for this purpose.
That said, I do think that the more we can "Wiessingerize" the language used
around breastfeeding, the more we can gradually change the culture that
diminishes it. That is, in case anyone doesn't know what that term means,
assume breastfeeding is the normal behaviour against which other behaviour
has to be compared.
Nan Jolly MB BCh. IBCLC. LLLL
Port Elizabeth, South Africa
>>Iatrocentric - believing that the world centers around medicine, or
>>doctors, or hospitals, as in "The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding
>>are iatrocentric".
I've always thought Step Ten - "Foster the establishment of breastfeeding
support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or
clinic" - should really be Step 0 - "Foster the establishment of
breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them during pregnancy or
before."
But it hit me that it's been put last because hospitals (or, more correctly,
WHO and UNICEF trying to work from a hospital perspective) see breastfeeding
as beginning with *them*. It doesn't, of course. It begins with a child's
own breastfeeding experience, or with her feeding her doll, or with her
observing the mothers around her. By the time she hits the hospital in
labor, her attitudes toward infant feeding are pretty much a done deal. But
the hospital's iatrocentric view prevents it from working pre-conception to
help shift a woman's - or a culture's - perspective from bottle-feeding to
breastfeeding. And so it relies on that pitifully neglected last step.
For years I've urged doing the last step first, and now I can explain why in
a nutshell, thanks to roving thoughts as I mop: Iatrocentric breastfeeding
may sound good, but it isn't how the real world works.
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, nearly invisible but slowly getting shoveled
out in Ithaca, NY USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com
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