As I wrote earlier, BF has not been a marker for a particular parenting
style through most of human history, it's just been the way you fed a baby
if you wanted it to live.
Michel Odent has some theories about separation of mothers and babies,
especially about customs which limit babies' access to colostrum.  I don't
know the theories, I was told of them only yesterday while interviewing a
midwife colleague who spent half of the last year at a hospital run by the
International Committee of the Red Cross, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

That was a digression from our interview.  The gist of it is that Odent
feels babies ought to have unlimited access to colostrum, and none of us
would disagree with that, on physiology alone.  I don't think anyone knows
really what the long- or short-term emotional effects of early separation
are, and it is a moot point as far as I'm concerned, because the physiologic
arguments for keeping mothers and babies together are so incontrovertible.

To the point for lactnetters: my colleague was in a very challenging work
situation, as the community has been under extreme stress, natural and
human-made, for over two decades, and her hospital was the main surgical
facility for the southern part of Afghanistan, which is the size of France.

She reports that the hospital assumes breastfeeding as the norm, and most
mothers breastfeed of pure necessity.  Local tradition is to wait until
engorgement before putting baby to breast, and pre-lacteal feeds of teas and
other unknown concoctions was the rule.  Men were not permitted onto the
ward, as there were no private rooms, and it would be inappropriate for
women to be on view to men who were not their husbands.  Female relatives
were omnipresent, living on the ward, often two or more per mother, and
provided all personal care to mother and baby, including the feedings before
baby was put to breast.  The fathers kept watch outside the hospital,
bringing food and clothes for mother and baby, as this was also a service
not provided by the hospital.

My colleague was deeply impressed with the love and respect the husbands
demonstrated for their wives, and the reverence, joy and gratitude on the
part of all the adults, over the births of live babies or the saving of a
woman's life if the baby had already died.  As this hospital only got the
most complicated cases, some having traveled on foot for days to get there,
the stillbirth rate was about 50 per cent.  That's every other woman on the
ward, mourning the loss of her baby, and they were mourned, regardless of
gender.

She also reported with regret and concern, that powdered artificial baby
milks were being used, by the well-to-do mothers.  Again, it was the family
who provided food, not the hospital.  So it seems that the society is on the
verge of the transitional stage of abandoning breastfeeding.  These babies
will be the most vulnerable in the event of disruption of supply lines, and
internet access is not generally available in Afghanistan, and the Red Cross
has withdrawn all foreign workers from the country, though the local
employees are still running things.

I am thinking a lot about the babies there.  We have so few channels left
through which to help.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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