I just returned from Bali, Indonesia, where I assisted approximately 40
women at some point from the prenatal to postpartum period--attending about
30 births or so. Of all these women, I only had to give lactation management
assistance THREE times*. Of those women that needed lactation help, two of
the three were Westerners. I only helped two Westerners in the
birth/postpartum period--so a 100% incidence of some sort of breastfeeding
problem.
I firmly believe that Westerners are coming from a bottle feeding culture
and their perspective is such that breastfeeding is an area of unlimited
challenges. The one Indonesian who needed lactation help had the most
severely inverted nipples I'd ever seen, so she had a physiologic reason to
have problems. The Westerners did not.
It was pretty amazing IMO.
*I will caveat that I did have to spend a fair amount of energy emphasizing
the adequacy of colostrum and convincing some women that their babies were
in fact "getting enough" in the first three days, as there are definitely
cultural messages that the Balinese have received about that... Also, one of
the two Westerners did not really seem to recognize that she was, indeed,
having bf challenges, as her baby was slowly gaining/inadequately stooling,
but she didn't really seem to believe it was a problem. But still...I think
it was pretty profound.
Gina
--
Gina Gerboth
Intern Midwife, IBCLC, CD(DONA), CBE
Pueblo, Colorado
www.safepassagebirth.com
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 6:52 AM, Rowena Tucker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > KIm, Were they eating fish at home and now have a more Westernized diet?
> > I'm wondering about dietary changes. Rowena
> > R Tucker IBCLC
> > Bryan, Texas, USA
> >
> >
>
>
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