Dear Friends:
I wrote last week about the mother who didn't believe she had milk,
until she expressed some and squirted me in the chest! I went back to her today
for the final visit.
She isn't breastfeeding. She 'doesn't have milk'. I couldn't reach her;
I told her I was said that I couldn't help her accept her abundance of milk.
But breastfeeding is the last thought for her. She told me her story.
She lives with her husband (an arranged marriage) and his mother. Her
husband hits her (which is culturally accepted), and is hassling her now. He
wants to know why she had a cesarean, and is angry with her because she can't
work.
Her parents lived in this country until 2 years ago. Her father died,
and her mother went back to India because her husband wouldn't permit his
mother-in-law to live in his house. This mother keeps her mother's picture by the
bed. She said, "Sometimes I cry" and tears flowed as she talked of her
mother. They do talk on the telephone.
The pressure is on this woman now to deliver a son next time. She was
asking me where she could find a doctor who will do as they do in India, take
an ultrasound in the first trimester and do an abortion if the baby is a girl.
I told her that I didn't know of such a place in the USA, and that isn't the
custom here.
While the practices she describes are not in line to what we in the
States ( and in the world) aspire, her beliefs and point of view are as strong as
anyone's. The mores of the world will not change fast enough to have impact
on this lonely, suffering lady. Her husband will punish her if she has
another girl baby.
She wanted to know how to have a normal birth next time. I gave her the
name of the Farm and suggested she find a doula or a direct entry midwife.
She hates the cesarean and doesn't want another. I told her that she would have
to prepare as much for the next baby as she did for her big secondary school
examination.
I am upset at her distress, and with this glimpse of a woman's life from
another culture. And this is in my neighborhood, in a nice apartment not to
far from where I live.
Breastfeeding is not her concern now; she said, "Maybe next time." Maybe
if she delivers a son?
Oh dear.
warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE
Maternal-Child Adjunct Faculty Union Institute and University
Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human Lactation
Support the WHO Code and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative
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