RE: Birth/Breastfeeding:
The best book I can recommend on this subject is "The Impact of Birthing
Practices on Breastfeeding" by Mary Kroeger (midwife) and Linda Smith (a
founder of the IBLCE board). If I could write a book, this would be it. The
best $40 and 5 hours you could spend on the subject.
I've been in obstetrics for 25 years and seen the pendulum swing...The glory
days of birth in the 80's (after Bradley and Grantley Dick-Read rescued it)
when women just worked with their labors and found it works quite well when
you work with it. Then came the tidal wave of monitors, epidurals, and the
resultant interventions and complications. I always wonder at times like
that "what will rescue birth now?" Then came hydrotherapy in 1996 - got
women out of the bed and off anesthesia to get into the tub. Once again, now
epidurals are the rule rather than the exception , and what becomes evident,
as so thoroughly pointed out in Kroeger's book: the detrimental effects on
babies, birth, and breastfeeding. Women are deciding to breastfeed in
greater numbers, and so I see this once again rescuing birth; as Linda Smith
so eloquently commented:
"Breastfeeding outcomes may become the "tail that wags the birth practices
dog," compelling birth caregivers to pay closer attention to the
breastfeeding mother-baby dyad after birth, thus supporting the continuum of
pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding."
Also expressed by a family practice physician/LC in Canada, when commenting
on the book: "Finally someone dares to declare that having a
medicalized birth is not the norm, just as bottlefeeding isn't the norm...
I'm a family physician with a breastfeeding clinic since 1996, and I had
begun noticing notable differences in the types of lactation problems
between the midwife-assisted births and the gynecologist-assisted ones.
Unfortunately, women are not aware of this and they themselves request
epidurals for pain-free births. Little do they know that they are harvesting
a multitude of related post-partum & breastfeeding problems, for themselves
AND baby. Once this is explained to them, they often realise the connections
and wish they had known... This is a book every practitioner doing
deliveries should read."
If obsterical care is going to pass out meds and anesthesia to women in
labor like candy, having consumers make medical decisions without the full
knowledge of their risks and consequences, then consumers need to have the
knowledge regarding the risks and benefits of the medical decisions they are
making. And the detrimental impact on their birth, their baby and their
breastfeeding.
Marie Farver RN BSN IBCLC RLC
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