I rarely have
Novocain when I have dental work and I never take pain medications,
nor does anyone else in my household. I agree with Cathy Genna that this discussion raises a broader question about our relationship with pain, our perceptions of pain and our ability to see ourselves moving through painful experiences. I think it is important to ask ourselves why we are so culturally so fearful of all pain, dependent upon drugs to avoid it and how our birth and early experiences might have prepared us neurologically for such dependency. OTOH, the comparison between Novocain does not apply to birth in that only I am affected if I use Novocain for a filling, while an infant is hugely affected by drugs in labor. 

To suggest that a discussion about normal birth implies a bashing of women who birth in hospitals is far off the mark. It would be just as fair to say that a discussion of the normalizing of artificial feeding is bashing women who do not breastfeed. I think I have made my own opinions quite clear--while I do think it is women who will have to create a new birth movement, I also think the medical establishment has created the current situation and intentionally perpetuates it. Please remember that obstetrics is the area of medicine that LEAST relies on evidence-based practices. I think women have just as much right to know how dangerous it is to impose the medical model on normal healthy birthing women and their babies as they do to know how dangerous it is to impose artificial feeding on them. 

 I would imagine all of us
have first-hand experience of breastfeeding happening w/o intervention
and support, of breastfeeding working well for ourselves, family, clients,
etc. I am sure that the members of this list believe that babies are meant to be fed at breast, and we have an understanding of the history of the intentional undermining of breastfeeding by the pharmaceutical companies and how this informs a mother's, perceptions of what is possible. We are frustrated by the lack of education among health care providers and we tend to know what is happening when a mother tells us she "had to feed AIM", she "couldn't bf because of xyz", etc.? We tend to agree that it is likely she could have bf successfully, that her baby probably did not need AIM, etc. but that she likely had to contend with a poor support system, lack of accurate information, cultural adversity and birthing practices that undermine feeding. 

I am perplexed that we do not have the same understanding of birth practices, that we do not recognize just as readily that a woman rarely needs medical intervention, no matter how important it might be to her to believe she did. If we apply the same argument to feeding that we do to birth, we would say that AIM has saved more babies than it has harmed, that women have the right to avoid the discomfort (perceived or otherwise) of breastfeeding and that we are judging them to tell them that their feeding choices were undermined and directed by marketing efforts, cultural attitudes and medical mismanagement. We would give all babies AIM immediately after birth, just to be sure they get enough to eat. We would pay lip service to trusting the body, while doing nothing of the kind. We argue that women should trust their bodies to feed their babies, while believing they cannot birth them. 

Medicalized birth is no less significant in its impact on human health than is artificial infant feeding. It is a cultural construct to separate birth and feeding when in reality they are inseparable. As with the suggestion that everyone see Rikki Lake's movie, I would also suggest reading some of the most important work on birth available today, such as the work of Michel Odent, Marsden Wagner, Henci Goer, Suzanne Arms and Sarah Buckley. Interventions have their place in both birth and feeding, but they would be a lot less necessary in feeding if we drastically limited their role in birth.  
 


Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA
Intuitive Parenting Network LLC


 








 


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