Rachel, You said it sister!
<<I will also venture a claim that institutions which condone and even
promote such a bizarre view of the physiology of human birth are unlikely to
encourage practices which support breastfeeding.  So these babies whose
chances of experiencing normal nutrition are already compromised, will be
doubly compromised in the first hours and days after birth.  It must be
difficult to imagine how simple normal infant feeding is, if all the staff
ever sees are babies born this way.>>

I am a neonatal nurse and very much educated via nursing school and later
"trained" in various jobs in the medical model. I am beginning to believe,
as recent posters have stated, that the MFCI has got to take high priority
over the BFHI, or we will get nowhere. Lucky that last step of MFCI is the
BFHI, as of course it just follows naturally. I am embarrassed to say that I
was not really enlightened about normal birth, not really knowing much about
midwifery (almost nonexistent here), or homebirths, and having medicalized
births; my OB was a high risk perinatologist; but have learned so much here
on lactnet in the last several years. Recently, a mother at my hospital who
arrived with a birth plan, refused to be separated from her baby, declined
the baby's bath, etc. She was looked upon as a freak. I hope it will be
better for my daughter.

Laurie Wheeler, RN, MN, IBCLC
Violet Louisiana, s.e. USA

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