Jan wrote

<What I am denigrating is the entire
attitude that goes into prenatal care, labor and delivery as one enormous
need for technology because a woman isn't to be trusted to do it without
it
all.>

I write as someone who spent the final 20 years of my working life as
coordinator of a large county public health prenatal service, providing
casefinding and referral of high risk mothers and offering prenatal care
during the first 35 weeks of pregnancy for 600-800 low-risk pregnant
women each year. (It provided a wonderful opportunity for anticipatory
education about breastfeeding!)

It is sad when a woman interprets her care and testing as a sign of her
own inadequacy. Certainly, explaining the "need" for testing should be
"owned" by the HCP, and not "blamed" on the mother's body. The semantics
certainly need improvement if this is the way it comes across to an
individual mother.

In truth, it is really an admission of the legal and ethical fear of the
inadequacy of the care-giver's crystal ball. In today's liability
climate, the HCP's failure to practice according to the prevailing
standards might well be risking his/her professional demise.

The sky-high insurance rates paid by those who care for mothers during
birth, even the labor and delivery nurses themselves, is an indication of
this climate. Good outcomes of pregnancy and birth are seen as a human
right, and rightfully so. We have a much longer way to go regarding good
outcomes for breastfeeding.

If something that compromises the health of mother and baby can be
discovered by today's technology, and that technology is not explained,
offered and properly utilized, the opportunity is missed to help those
comparatively few mothers and babies who need extra safeguards.

Too bad the boundaries are so often "trespassed" by brainwashing the
mother about just whose needs this technology is meeting!

And how sad that the "shoe is still so often on the other foot" when it
comes to complicating the initiation of breastfeeding. But as yet "they
know not what they do". That, IMHO, is where we need to concentrate our
energies by educating both parents and HCP's, and choosing our battles
wisely.

Just my $.02.

Jean
******************
K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC
Dayton, Ohio USA

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