Dear Friends:
 
Humans are so complicated. While their body mechanisms can usually work  
well, and even better in the best environment (example: birth), their brains  have 
the power to undo physiology. 
 
Feelings and beliefs are contagious. I remember my midwives talking about  
induction when I went more than 2 weeks past my due date. I refused to do it;  
for me, walking into a hospital for an induction would have like walking into a 
 bank with a gun to commit robbery. My insides, my gut, my intuition refused 
to  cooperate. Clelia was born at 43.5 weeks post-conception (and I knew when 
I  conceived because my husband and I were aiming, and I was measuring my 
basal  body temperature every morning), covered in vernix, bright-eyed and ready.  
Inside, my baby was always ready to play and her heart rate would go up when 
I  rubbed her little butt; we all saw this on the "stress" tests. (They are  
well-named! Nothing more stressful to than to have to defend one's  wholeness.)
 
Yet I didn't feel wonderful about my refusal. Going against the tide of  
trusted experts felt just like that, listening to them express their fears and  
dealing with their worries  really felt like  walking against a strong  current, 
doable and demanding effort. It did take energy from me to do that. 
 
So it is with breastfeeding. While the evidence (Dusdieker is one) showed  
that mothers don't have to drink water to make enough milk, and other stories  
show that women can nurse through famine, and adopting mothers can make milk  
easier in countries outside the US (I've heard Elisabeth Hormann speak on  
this)...beliefs make barriers. I wonder if growing up in the States, where  
breastfeeding is still under siege, and has been for at least 3 generations,  
re-orients brain patterns. I wonder if modern stress impairs let-down, so that a  
mother may make plenty of milk but if she is living in an environment where the  
other way to feed a baby is readily available, she becomes more susceptible 
to  beliefs that she must have X and Y to make milk.
 
Mothers living in places where food is scarce that are supplemented  had a 
longer breastfeeding duration; when their babies growth rates are compared  with 
the babies of unsupplemented mothers, there was no difference. (Think about  
the research from the Gambia....was that Woolridge?) 
 
Does the baby respond to the stressed (tired, hungry, or thirsty) mother's  
energies and act in a way that the mother interprets as a lack of milk, when 
the  problem is really lack of milk flow? Or is the baby mirroring the mother's  
discomfort and crankiness?
 
Or am I thinking through my hat, this lovely summer's morn?
 
warmly,
 
Nikki Lee RN, BSN, MS, IBCLC, CCE, CIMI
craniosacral therapy  practitioner
_www.myspace.com/adonicalee  

 



_ (http://www.myspace.com/adonicalee) 



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