Betsy said:

> >> If we want to further our profession, it is prudent to go with
> >> the flow (where we may effect quiet change) than to buck a very 
powerful system,
look bad and diminish the credibility that we have worked so hard to 
build.<<<<


So we are supposed to worry about "looking bad?"  Are you kidding me? 

Yes, sadly, there is a "powerful system"
in charge of birthing culture in this country, and to say that the only 
proper and acceptable
method of confronting and challenging it is to lay low, be quiet and 
"look good"
may be your way.  It may, in fact, be the best way to keep your JOB if 
you're a nurse.

But it damn sure isn't MY way, and I don't have to pussy foot around 
worrying about what some
overbearing and unenlightened head doctor thinks is "right."  Or what 
some resentful controlling
night nurse likes to do with "her" babies.  I think telling the truth 
straight out works best.

When the time came for me to have a baby in a town where every mother 
was sectioned
after 12  hours of labour, I chose homebirth.  And I most definately 
had  a better outcome than
I would have had in the horrible maternity ward in that town. 

I bless the lay midwife/Bradley instructor who told me the truth about 
what was happening to
women in that hospital.  I am forever grateful for the wise-woman 
birthing knowledge she
imparted to me, and the confidence she helped me develop in my body's 
ability to give birth.

Forget the institutional mindset- birthing and breastfeeding wisdom must 
be passed on
by women who still carry the knowledge.  If this makes some in the 
medical establishment
uncomfortable or worse- well, that's their problem, not mine.  In the 
great majority of cases
medicalization is an unecessary hazard of both birth and breastfeeding. 

Hmmph.
Sue Jacoby, IBCLC
Clovis, CA (not the town in question...)









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