It took me 6 weeks to love each of my babies, 25 and 28 years ago.  I had "very good" hospital births, but in each case the baby was whisked away right at the start and there was no rooming in.  I can remember looking down at my first on his changing table sometime in the first 6 weeks and saying to him, "I would defend you with my life... but I don't love you," and thinking how odd a paring of feelings that was.  (With my second, I just figured that was "the way I'm built" and accepted it, knowing love would come, as of course it did.)  I dreamt that my firstborn actually belonged to my college roommate. 

I breastfed anyway, because that's what I had fully expected to do and because with my background it would have been embarrassing not to (!), but I did it without any particular maternal feelings for the first month and a half, and I felt an urge to escape my babies when I could (though I didn't act on it).  I can easily see how the woman who deep down "expects" to bottle-feed would very quickly end up doing so.  And what's missing from my subsequent relationship with my children?  Those who've had both hospital and truly good home births all know. 

This is an aspect of early parenting that we, the breastfeeding end, need to recognize.  A good birth isn't just about avoiding an epidural, it's about understanding the need for a birth that any mammal mama would be happy with, if we want to get mammalian maternal behaviors out of it.

If a mare doesn't have cervical stimulation during the birth (because of c-section or epidural) she doesn't initiate maternal behaviors because the baby "wasn't born".  A c-section in just about any mammal tends to result in rejection of the baby.  There've been enormous problems with zoo animals rejecting their babies despite medication-free births, because of the hugely disruptive environment in which they birth.  Licking is standard postpartum behavior for all mammals (yes, we're probably in there too), but dogs won't lick their puppies if the puppies are washed first.  Goats may not mother correctly if the kids are dried by someone else.  Dogs that are too stiff (from overbreeding) to form a continuous-touch "cuddle curl" around their puppies may not mother correctly.  Sheep need to smell themselves on their lambs.  And so on.

A mismanaged birth, on a mammalian level, involves the withholding of normal birth location, sights, sensations, smells, and/or touch.  And our standard births actually make a point of withholding all of those!  The only thing that causes most American mothers to accept their babies, I'm convinced, is the fact that we know intellectually that the baby must belong to us.  If we want to improve breastfeeding, we *have* to be part of the force that improves birth.  Our mammalian heritage requires it.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com
"When something important is going on, silence is a lie." - AM Rosenthal

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