Nikki wrote: >     Chayn asks a powerful question.
>     Why don't pregnant women learn more of what they need to know?
>     I think they are.
>     They are learning to have epidurals from everyone around them who
talks
> about how wonderful it is. They are learning how terrifying birth can be
from
> watching the TV show Maternity Ward on the Learning Channel. They are
seeing
> pictures of slender women after birth, with loving and attentive partners
who is
> carrying the beaming baby in a bucket. They are learning all the time.
>     What they are learning is expensive and dangerous to both their
health.

Many pregnant women and new mothers also turn to the people they see as
experts - the health care professionals who care for them during pregnancy,
birth and after the baby arrives. They take the brochures on breastfeeding
(produced by formula companies) that the doctor hands out and expect them to
have good advice. They ask the nurses in the hospital for help if
breastfeeding isn't going smoothly, and obediently top up every feeding with
formula. If they aren't getting much sleep, they ask the public health nurse
or pediatrician what to do, and if they live in my community, are probably
advised to give formula and cereal before bedtime and to start
"sleep-training." (I see mothers fairly often who literally whip the breast
out of the baby's mouth if he so much as closes his eyes, for fear of
committing the dreaded crime of "nursing the baby to sleep.")

We know that, unfortunately, health care professionals and formula company
booklets are rarely good sources of information on breastfeeding. It is
reasonable to expect a new first-time mother to figure that out? It is not,
really, that these mothers don't make any effort to learn about
breastfeeding and baby care - it is that there is so much bad, terrible,
unhelpful information out there, and much of it comes from what looks like
reliable, respected sources.

Teresa Pitman
Guelph, Ontario

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