Dear Friends: There is pain as pathology and warning (as with a broken leg or tooth) and there is the pain of hard work as in a marathon or turning the soil to make a garden. The trouble is that the medications women are given to deal with their labors also have an impact on the baby, unlike the analgesics one takes for a root canal or a broken leg. Of course there is a need for labor pain relief. My protest is the routine use of it. Women need something to get through labor. That could be a loving and supportive environment, encouragement, the freedom to do what they want as in eating, drinking and moving about. Or that something could be drugs; as hospitals are set up to give only drugs, (and even insist that women use them) that is most women will use. When was the last time a woman was given a nice sandwich or a cup of hot tea in labor? What adult wants ice chips when they are working hard? If our birth environments changed, our breastfeeding would change also. Breastfeeding rates diminished in part when birth moved from home to hospital. The pendulum has shifted now so much that women who want an unmedicated spontaneous labor in a hospital in my area are scorned and treated in a less than embracing manner. The best we can do now is to keep mothers and babies together. Nissen and Sepkoski are but 2 researchers that showed that the impact of medications can be dampened if baby is left with the mother until the first breastfeeds.....Baby-Friendly hospitals in the US show this too. Personally speaking, in my labors I asked for a cesearan section (twice) and my head to be cut off (once) at 8 centimeters dilatation. But because I'd set up my environment to support an unmedicated labor, and was also fortunate enough to have a nice physiologic labor that was over within a day........those things did not happen. Most women can have an experience like that. The trick is to keep the fear at a minimum. Hospital obstetrical practices induce fear in women, both subtly and overtly........medications are more often given to deal with fear than with pain. Fear makes pain intolerable..........which Dr. Read wrote about 75 years ago. warmly, Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE, CIMI craniosacral therapy practitioner _www.myspace.com/adonicalee _ (http://www.myspace/adonicalee) **************************************See AOL's top rated recipes (http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?NCID=aoltop00030000000004) *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome