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
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