Returning from Thanksgiving vacation, I've been reviewing the discussion of
c-sections with considerable interest.  I noted in my review of the 2003
edition of the "Breastfeeding Answer Book" for the March 2003 issue of San
Diego County Breastfeeding Coalition's "Breastfeeding Update"
(http://www.breastfeeding.org/newsletter/v3i1/page7.html) that tips for
addressing post-cesarean-section issues were now included in the
"Breastfeeding Basics" chapter, and La Leche League might seem to have
capitulated to the realities of American medical practice.  Since then, the
controversy over elective c-sections has only reinforced a sense of alarm in
many of us.

I want to thank everyone for chiming in with their personal perspectives.
They are all so valuable and give us a much better "composite picture of the
elephant" of motherhood in the 21st century.  From my personal experience,
some important snapshots come to mind:

-- Giving birth naturally at home to my third child in March 1992 after my
husband had died in January.  It took 25 hours and lots of support from 1
friend, 2 relatives, 2 midwives, and a midwifery apprentice.  That friend
and those relatives remain very important to me and to that child -- how
much of it was due to the "foxhole buddies" experience and/or the prolonged
dose of oxytocin and whatever pheromones may have been released?  What did
the act of giving birth (rather than having my child "removed", which would
have been likely with such extended labor) and the prolonged dose of
oxytocin mean for my mental health?  What did an uncomplicated breastfeeding
experience do for my mental health?  I only know that my diagnosis of
depression held off until my son's weaning 3 years later, and evaporated
when I remarried in 1996 and started getting regular doses of oxytocin
again.

-- The tangled biochemical pathways chart on my professor's wall, and how
clear it became to me from my biochemistry coursework that hormones affect
so much of physiology in such dose-dependent ways that meddling with the
natural course of hormones should only be done with great fear and
trembling.

-- The session at a LLL of Southern California-Nevada Area Conference where
someone from the staff of the Encino, CA Lactation Institute doled out hugs
and said it's because she's an "oxytocin junkie".  (If you're reading this,
did you know how strong an impression it made?)  How much *dys*functional
behavior happens in this society when people strive in inappropriate ways to
saturate chemical receptors starved for oxytocin?

I find myself anxious for the possible threat to physical and mental health
of mother and child from surgical birth.  But I also grieve, as I do when a
child is fed AIM, that an important endogenous natural resource is being
wasted.  What a shame that a child should be fed something formulated at a
factory from various synthesized ingredients when the real thing flows
naturally from his mother.  What a shame when we substitute incisions for a
hormone-driven process a mother is physiologically and psychosocially geared
to undergo.

Ruth Piatak, BA, MS, LLLL
Plano, TX

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