Just another listmother, adding my take on why the birthing thread needs to
be reined in, in addition to what has already been posted by Kathy and
Kathleen.  I think it is because we have very nearly fallen headlong into
the trap of defending our own experiences per se, as though that is enough
to pass judgment on everyone else's choices, everywhere else, and as though
passing judgment is somehow constructive.

Lactnet is not a forum for getting help for one's own breastfeeding
problems.  It is not a place where we base our discussions primarily on our
own experience, though we all know that there are times when our own
experience is pertinent.  But simply having breastfed is not qualification
enough to give professional help to another person, or even to give
systematic help to another person as a peer counselor.  In some cases one's
own breastfeeding experience really gets in the way of giving appropriate
care to another, because it is such a deeply significant part of who we are
that the feelings it activates can impede us in our ability to see another
person's situation clearly enough to help them in it.

I want to remind the list that Lactnet isn't primarily a place to re-hash
our own birth experiences, any more than it is primarily a place for us to
re-hash our own breastfeeding experiences.  One reason this topic has such
potential to distract Lactnet is that the only thing that engages women more
than telling about their traumatic (or ecstatic!) breastfeeding experience,
is telling about their traumatic (or ecstatic) birth experiences.  This is
the big problem, because it is so hard to separate the issue itself from
your personal, life-changing, soul-scarring experience.  It is a risky thing
to share one's experience with thousands of others on a list like this, and
I admire every poster who has been so brave and so generous.  But I also
want us all to move on from there, and stick around, keep on reflecting
about how our experiences have made us into the people we are, who want to
help other women, presumably to make their lives easier.  The notion that
your own fiery baptism could help someone else, may give it more meaning,
but it may also blind you and reduce your effectiveness in helping another
whose life experience is totally different from yours. 

I don't think there are any other topics that have such enduring power to
engage us; even women who have forgotten nearly everything that has happened
to them in rest of their adulthood, may remember details of their
pregnancies, births, and breastfeeding, because the feelings these things
arouse, cause them to become deeply embedded in who we are.  Our
pregnancies, our births, and our breastfeeding stories define us far more
than we like to admit.  And we don't even like to think that there could
have been different endings to all those stories, if we had been somewhere
else, with someone else, at some other time.  It can be painful, especially
if we feel regret about some aspect of those events.  Still, it is always,
without exception, true, that if you had been in a different place at a
different time, the experience would have been different.  Possibly better,
possibly worse, but not the same.  If you on top of all that were another
person, you would have another perspective entirely.  And you would be just
as invested in defending that perspective as you are in defending the one
you were dealt.  

But the bottom line for Lactnet is that posts need to have something to do
with helping mothers to breastfeed.  Anything that has been shown to improve
outcomes or to worsen them, is an accepted topic for posts to this list.  We
can even handle a certain amount of borderline discussion and side threads,
but the turn this thread has taken into the realm of the very personal,
holds the potential to derail this list, at least temporarily, because of
the emotion it arouses and the concomitant volume of posts it generates.  I
hope that's not why any of us subscribed.  I like emotions as much as the
next person, and I have them frequently myself, but I'd love it for Lactnet
to get back its focus and resume being the passionate but not so emotional
lifeline I need so much in my work.  

Sincerely
Rachel Myr
Recovering from two awful night shifts in Kristiansand, Norway

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