In a message dated 7/30/2006 8:23:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Could the people that have identified this as a
problem please tell us the number of hospital assaulted women you see in a
year and the total number of clients you see in a year?
Dear Friends:
What an amazing question..............and I have no idea how to answer.
Clinically, I don't encounter many women that have articulated feelings
or described assault. Maybe 5 a year will actively volunteer such details.
However, nationally, I think we need to look at things like postpartum
depression and limiting size of families as passive manifestations of
reactions to assault. Rowe-Murray and Fisher in Australia described a connection
between depression at 8 months postpartum and not holding the baby after birth.
There was a study published in MIDIRS about 8 years ago, and there have been
more published since, where women have changing their childbearing plans after
an operative delivery.
Our culture in the USA embraces denial as a cultural norm. How else to
can it be alright for one woman in 3 to have her baby cut out of her, which is
the national rate today? The US can get everyone to put babies 'Back to
Sleep' in 2 years, and we can't get more women to breastfeed longer? Give me a
break! Hospitals giving out formula samples? What better example of denial can
there be than that.........except maybe the AAP taking money from the formula
companies?
Years ago, Diony Young (or was it Doris Haire?) talked about the
presence of NICUs as a sign that hospital birth is risky. The March of Dimes
identified that induction was a leading cause of prematurity in
2001................where is the outrage about that?
And that Lieberman study, looking at 1280 dyads and discovering that the
mean time from epidural placement to maternal fever was 5.9 hours, and that
if the maternal fever went over 101, the baby was more likely to have a
seizure in the nursery. The conclusion of that study was to propose investigation
of neonatal seizures.............are they are problem? How outrageous, how
blatant, how denying can we get???
Women in hospitals may not realize they have been denied their natural
process and rights as they unable to labor and birth spontaneously, at their
own pace, nor able to eat and drink and move at will. (Name me one other
setting where competent adults are denied food and drink and mobility. And don't
tell me that they "need" to be starved and thirsted!) Because the common ways
to birth today are technology-driven (induction, medication, a host of
machines, and strangers wandering in and out of the birthing environment) women
have no standard of reference upon which to even consciously realize how they
have been assaulted.
However, the energy of the assaults show up in a variety of other ways:
choosing not to commit to breastfeeding being but one. Women can say no to
something finally, they can't say no to induction or cesarean section, so they
choose to wean or not even get started.
Postpartum depression is another consequence of assault. Katherine
Dettwyler posted something on LACTNET years ago that I always remember: she
thought that not breastfeeding told the body that the baby had died, and that
postpartum depression could stem from that missing of natural, physiologic
process. Now what a thought!!
Disconnection from the baby is another way.
I am sure we can think of many others.
warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE
Lactation Consultant, Philadephia Department of Public Health
Maternal-Child Adjunct Faculty, Union Institute and University
Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human Lactation
www.breastfeedingalwaysbest.com
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