"The first intervention in natural childbirth is the one the woman does 
herself when she walks out the front door of her house. It is from that 
first intervention that all others follow." ~Michael Rosenthal, M.D.

I have been thinking about many of the discussions recently on Lactnet, 
especially as it relates to the choices women make. I think that it is 
too easy for us to engage in debates such as which intervention might 
be necessary in which situation or whether Lamaze or Bradley might be 
more empowering or even how much breastfeeding is enough.

I think they are all irrelevant discussions, b/c they all legitimize 
the medical model. Birth and breastfeeding are not a medical event. 
They are organic, human processes that speak of our very nature as 
beings. Birth has the power to define us as strong and powerful and 
capable and conscious. Breastfeeding is the means by which the nature 
of the human infant is defined. Birth is the natural outcome of 
gestation and breastfeeding is the natural outcome of birth. 
Breastfeeding isn?t nice; it is necessary.

I have no desire to reclaim any romanticized past when it comes to 
birth or breastfeeding. I have a desire to embrace our growing 
knowledge and understanding about the nature of this truly elegant 
process and support it in its own paradigm. Birth and breastfeeding and 
all they mean have their own truth. Trying to define them within the 
medical model is a terrible mistake leading to terrible loss. We will 
never make hospital birth safe for women, b/c it is inherently unsafe 
to be in a strange environment, observed, monitored and drugged during 
birth. So long as birth is unsafe, babies and their mothers are unsafe 
and they will struggle to breastfeed, to attach, to rise above the way 
they have been treated. While there is little if any valid research to 
support the safety of any modern obstetrical practice, there is plenty 
of research documenting the safety of normal, uninterrupted birth, 
although it is absurd that we have had to prove the obvious. 
(Similarly, we have all bemoaned the fact that there is no evidence as 
to the safety of AIM, yet almost all babies are subjected to its use).

If we really want to normalize breastfeeding, we need to be willing to 
do so from the paradigm of the physiologic norm. I will continue to 
assume that women want to know how essential is our biological mandate, 
and that everything can change. After all, change occurs in an 
instant?it is only the letting go of resistance that takes so long.

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