Dear Janet,

According to your name you are from Dutch orrigin. In Holland, lots of
people are called Van den Berg, which means something like 'from the
mountain'. I am happy to tell you what I know about Dutch figures and
practices. Our breastfeeding rates have been very low the past few years,
but they are getting higher slowly I think. At the moment 81% of higher
educated mothers start breastfeeding and 57 % of lower educated. I am not
sure how many people still breastfeed at three month, but that should be
something between 30% and 40% I presume. Although we have a growing number
of lactation consultants, we do not have lactation consultants in all
important places yet. We are working on that and I hope with a growing
number of lactation consultants, and thus better educated maternity nurses,
breastfeeding rates will go up further in the future, so will duration of
breastfeeding. We still have a lot of work to do.

Childbirth is a totally diffrent matter in our country. We are quite unique
in the world I think. We have three government approved schools for
midwivary and as a consequence lots of woman give birth at home. The figure
goes up and down a bit, but homebirth is something like 30% of all 180.000
birth. Than we have the policlinical birth. Woman going to the hospitan to
have their baby, very ofthen they are assisted by there own midwife, and go
home within 14 hours after birth. For instance, when the baby is born in the
night, they probably go home around ten in the morning. Problem with
breastfeeding is, a lot of baby's still get a bottle at night. Why bother
with a mother that is not going to stay. When mothers deliver at home or are
going home so quickly, they have a maternity help at their home. They can be
nurses, but they more often are woman only educated to take care of mother
and child after the birth, for a maximum of 8 days.

Pregnant mothers only go to a gyneacologist when problems are to be
expected, and midwives send them in when something comes up during
pregnancy. Same thing of course when something happens during labour. I am
not sure about the figures concerning ceasarians and epidurals, but as I
understand they are a whole lot lower than in the US and probably in Canada
as well. I will look into it and send the figures when I have them.

We have all kinds of prenatal classes and women tend to want to have natural
deliverys in our country. I had all my three baby's at home and they were
wonderfull experiences. It would not have been the same in a hospital. I
never felt unsecure about it besides I thought:"When something happens I
will be at the hospital sooner than the gyneacologist so why bother."
Midwives in our country believe that because women are more relaxed at home,
birth is easier as well, I think they have a point. We still have some GP's
(family docters) in rural aeria's who deliver baby's at home, but there are
only a few left. I will let you know about the figures as soon as I can.

Good luck with you LC classes!

Siemian Berghuijs, IBCLC, the Netherlands