Dear Jan:
    What a great post about choices in birth! Good for you.
    People forget that labor and birth is how humans get on this Earth, that
it is normal, that birth and death are normal events. I believe that part of
our problems with society and health care today stems from the transplanting
of normal human events (birth and death) from the home to the hospital.  That
has only happened in the 20th century, and the reason was to give student
doctors practice, not for the good of the people. Now, instead of normal
events, they have become terrifying  and expensive mysteries.
     Chances are better for healthy moms that babies will be healthy at home.
We don't do medications or epidurals at home because of the risk.
Breastfeeding more frequently becomes derailed in hospitals, not at home. We
all have lots of work in lactation because hospitals and the health care
system  have to be educated and negotiated with and informed; not because
breastfeeding and birth are inherently flawed activities.
    And of course we need the technology and the hospitals. Just not for
everybody. Fortunately today, women have choices. If those choices were truly
honored, and based on evidence, it would be a wonderful world and I would be
out of a job.
    Off the soapbox now....
    Warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MSN, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CSTP, CIMI
Elkins Park (a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  northeastern USA)

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