I am not a midwife. I do not work in a hospital.  I do have a small family
of 3.  I do talk alot to mums.  I do alot of reading (book worm is my middle
name).  The discussion about exhausted mothers is capturing my attention as
I am trying to put what is being  discussed together with my own personal
experience and the stories of other mums.

All my births were at a hospital with no intervention and a spontaneous
labour.  My memory of the first three  to four days was how high I was and
how awake a felt.  I remember how much more relaxed I was with the babies
with me and hung out waiting for them to wake up so that I could feed them.
I remember commenting to the staff(incl the doctor) just how great the
natural endophins were.  Mothers who delivered with out intervention and
drugs all seemed to have similar stories.  Tiredness and exhaustion seemed
to become real at week 3 for all the children.. I have recollections of
sharing with a fellow breastfeeding counsellor at how exhausted we are at 3
weeks.  This exhaustion phase seemed to at 3 weeks whether the baby had the
longer sleep during the night or day and wakeful periods during the  night
or day.  Counselling has reinforced the idea of the 3 three exhaustion trap
when baby was born with no intervention or dugs.

The story seems very different once labour experiences interventions of any
type.  We have discussed several times over the 3 years how intervention and
drugs interfer with the natural hormonal releases and inhibitions esp as it
relates to oxytocin.  I expect that most mothers go into labour wanting and
expecting an unassisted birth.  We know also that unmet expectations result
in various degress of loss and grief.  We also know that women grieve over
altered body image especially when they perceive that the change is unwanted
or that some part of their body is not functioning as it should.

Putting all this together I ask myself at how much this conversation is not
just about when to protect the mother from visitors and encourage her
partner in ways to support her, but also a cry to re-examine labour ward
pratices and the use of interventions in labour.  (Yes without intervention
infant and maternal mortality would sky rocket but perhaps we need to
revisit them so that un-necessary intervention is avoided).  How much more
do we need to understand the psychological and physiological effects of
intervention on the mother and look at ways  not only to encourage her to
sleep and recover but at the type of counselling that recognises the grief
that she (and her partner experience).  How much more do we need to
understand and practise some of the healing and bonding processes such as
skin-to-skin and kangaroo care not only for premmies but full term, healthy
babies too?    How much more do we need to understand the role of
breastfeeding in the overcoming of this exhaustion?  How much more do we
need to encourage people to consider the long term health and welfare of the
mother as a person, the baby as a person and the mother and baby as an
intermessed, closely knitted single unit?

I personally do not have any much knowledge on any of this.  I do have lots
of questions, lots of concerns.  So often in difficult situations we want to
pull hurting people out of them rather than  empowering them to make
decisions themselves and assisting them to look beyond the immediate and a
little to tomorrow.

Ruth Fiedler
Breastfeeding Counsellor
Australia

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html