Lee, You are so right! I find it so disheartening to hear the constant "meet the mother where she is" argument, b/c rather than a way of meeting her in a place where we can communicate, reach her, support her and empower her, it is so often used as a way to excuse ourselves form having the burden of speaking the truth. Who are we protecting? I would argue it is not the mother and baby, but the system in which we have learned to survive. When I first became an IBCLC, I hoped dearly that I would never have to recertify--I have so many other things I do in my life and in my work as a healer that I would be happy to be uneeded in this way. I think that itis terribly seductive to become a part of any system, b/c it makes it difficult to work for the abolition of that same system. When I did hospital labor support, I found I had to be very conscious of my own tendency to watch the EFM, b/c it was there and seemed to create a compass by which we could all orient ourselves. It is just too easy to be seduced, too easy to find a common frame of reference by which to all agree, too easy not to have to be aware, intuitive, present, responsible. Too easy to not even see the mother, not to have an organic, feeling, human being as the frame of reference. I tell mothers all of the time that babies are low tech people, usually requiring low tech solutuons. I know with all of my heart that everything matters--how we gestate matters, how we birth matters and how we nurture matters. Every single intervention that is unecessary does harm (and most are, inlcuding almost every intervention anyone of us has ever witnessed or experienced). Even those that er necessary do harm, but if we pay attention, we can work with intention to mitigate the harm, to facilitate healing. When we ignore the importance of pregnancy and birth as an opportunity for growth and healing, we are not "doing no harm". At the same time, truth is subjective--it depends very much on where we stand. I have a client whose journey through a traumatic birth and breastfeeding difficulties has been a great gift in her life as a mother, as it has challenged her to heal her own childhood wounds. Her baby has never received 100% breastmilk and was only put to breast for about a week. She pumped for 9 months. I have never ever lied to her. She knows there is a loss and that there are risks to AF. She would never have chosen to give even one drop of AIM to her child. But, sometimes lessons and gifts come in ways we could never expect. Would she have been better served if I had hedged and told her that her that it was really okay--didn't matter all that much, that her birth trauma was unrelated? Wounds present opportunities to heal. I think that when we pretend that why the mother feels disempowered doesn't matter, why she is struggling doesn't matter. that there really is no wound so long as there is a "healthy" baby (sadly, we have a very poor way of assessing this in our culture), then we eradicate that mother's opportunity to heal and to grow. I believe witnessing the mother's wounds as she reveals them is very much our responsibility. In the long run, I think if we are committed to public health, we need to know what that really means. Artificial feeding is destructive, in any amount. Medicalized birth is destructive. Unattached mothers and babies are a grave tragedy for all of us. Women need to know these things and so what if the perpetrators of these brutalities don't want us to say so. So what? If we all would say it, then what would "they" do? Who would be fired and who hired? Can something be necessary and destructive? Yes, of course. But, it is the slipperiest slope of all to talk about meeting mothers where they are, to talk about "necessary interventions" when they become our refuge from telling the truth. Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html