In response to my comment:

'I have a friend who says "assisted birth means assisted bf".'

Rachel wrote:

<< I'd hesitate to write off assisted births that quickly.  <snip>
Sometimes intervention in labor is not avoidable.  I really believe it is
even more imperative to use BFs healing potential in cases where there has
been intervention because the woman's trust in herself has already taken
such a beating.>>

When I posted that comment, I expected individual responses such as "I had a
medicalized birth and no trouble bf". But, a comment like this is not meant
to encompass the experience of every individual, but rather the experience of
the society. We all know that in Western cultures women need more help than
ever w/ bf and we know that birth plays a key role. We tend to talk about
this in terms of the baby (sleepy, unresponsive, uncoordinated suckle, etc),
but I think it is important to look at the impact on both partners in this
dance.
    So, Rachel, I completey agree with you that bf can be the experience that
restores a woman's faith in her body and her intuition and that for some
mothers, this just seems to be very easy, even after multiple interventions.
And I agree that interventions are sometimes (oh, so very rarely) needed in
birth.
    But, I also think that if interventions were really only limited to times
of real need, then even those mothers would be more inclined to bf and HCP's
would be more competent in providing support. When normal birth is the
experience of most women and babies *and* their HCP's, then they will more
readily recognize all of the dysfunctional behaviour we see at the breast for
what it is, rather than labelling it "normal" b/c it is all they ever see. On
the flip side, they will have such a familiarity with normal behaviour that
they will know better how to support the dyad in achieving success. When
HCP's just assume babies don't nurse for days, they are supporting as normal
a very dysfunctional process which I believe contributes more than almost
anything else to bf failure. Women intutively know their babies should be
nursing. The difficulties I see in most of my clients are the result of
medicalized birth followed by a medicalized view of the pp period.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

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