"Andrew MD" wrote:
< Well, go visit an "old" cemetery and count the infant graves
and then go to a "new" cemetery and count the infant graves.
...Perhaps we should go back to the prehistoric "good ole
days" when more than 50% of infants did not make it to one
year of age. To paraphrase a famous quote:  Those who do
not know their history are doomed
to repeat it.>

As someone who does spend lots of time in old churchyards
(in the UK and USA) and in researching birth statistics from
the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, I would like to ask
where your references are regarding the 50% infant mortality
rates? I think you are a victim of unfortunate chauvinist
constructs that make us think "we" "now" are "civilized" and
somehow better off in all ways. In prior centuries women had
higher mortality rates during childbirth (nowhere near 50%!)
than today,  but babies fared pretty well as long as their
mothers survived. In fact, until "modern" medicine came
along neonatal mortality rates (for birth) were comparable to
today's rates. After medical doctors appeared there was a
sudden rise in neonatal demise during childbirth!

Obstetrics, as a science, has a very interesting history. If
you go back to the beginnings you will find that the
population physicians had available for "practice" were
primarily high risk patients -- what we would today call street
people and/or "financially challenged". These women were
often unhealthy, and lived under the most trying
circumstances. The women "of means" wanted nothing to do
with doctors.  (This changed as physician attended birth
became trendy...then rich women started having riskier
childbirths.) Thus, from the very genesis of the speciality,
obstetrics practice has been based on the premise that every
pregnancy is high risk until proven otherwise.

Those of us who battle against breastfeeding myths that have
been passed from textbook to textbook from the last century
know how difficult it is to extinguish practice once it is
immortalized in a medical text!

The statistics (there are many references available) are
sobering. Childbirth became more risky as "modern
medicine" took over! Of course, even today, and when faced
with statistics showing MD assisted births are no safer than
midwife assisted births (yes, even when corrected for risk
factors) many physicians suffer HITSS (head in the sand
syndrome).

This post is not intended as a rant against obstetricians,
pediatricians or any other health care provider. (Really!) Of
course -- no one can deny that today we can save  babies
who are at high risk who would not have made it in prior
centuries. At the same time, its a pity we are blinded to the
fact that medicalization of childbirth has also created risk.

To paraphrase your quote:  Those who do not know their
history are doomed to misinterpret it.

Margery Wilson, IBCLC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Medical Department
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA