David Chamberlaain is one of the world's leading experts on perinatal 
psychology.

From:
http://birthpsychology.com/healing/historical.html

David Chamberlain ("Babies Remember Birth") writes:

"In the Age of Science, babies have not necessarily fared better. It 
may shock you to consider how many ways they have fared worse. In the 
last hundred years, scientific authorities robbed babies of their cries 
by calling them "echoes" or "random sound;" robbed them of their smiles 
by calling them "gas;" robbed them of their memories by calling them 
"fantasies;" and robbed them of their pain by calling it a "reflex.

Before this century, newborns found themselves in the hands of women: 
mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and midwives, but in the 20th century, 
infants collided head-on with physicians, typically male physicians. In 
the collision, infant senses, emotions, and cognitions were usually 
ignored. Doctors eventually gave serious attention to the pain of 
mothers but not to the pain of infants. Pediatricians and obstetricians 
created painful routines which continue today."

and

http://birthpsychology.com/violence/index.html
"Ironically, in modern hospital birth, violence and pain have become 
routine for babies. For most of the 20th century, neither obstetricians 
nor psychologists have regarded pain as a reality for newborns. 
Therefore, doctors have not hesitated to expose the baby to a harsh 
environment at birth, or to introduce painful routines, or painful 
instruments. Nor have they hesitated to use powerful chemicals in the 
form of drugs and anesthetics. All these departures from what normally 
happened at a home birth have profoundly altered the experience of 
birth for the baby. Babies protest being jabbed with needles for blood 
samples and vitamin K shots, don't like to be turned upside down, 
rushed through space, and handled by different people. Their skin is 
extremely sensitive and they complain when rubbed and cleaned. We have 
been making them angry, afraid, defensive, sad, and confused--for the 
greater part of the century."

"Research has followed these dramatic innovations at a great distance, 
warning of danger long after the damage was done. The results of this 
new way of birth may finally be calculated in the angry behavior of 
generations of men and women born in violence. We have been impregnated 
with drugs from the first moment of life. Are we so fascinated with 
drugs and the altered states they evoke because we were introduced to 
them at birth? Research findings point to these connections."

The information is all out there. All we have to do is be willing to 
know.
Jennifer Tow, iBCLC, CT, USA

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