In a message dated 4/5/2005 7:44:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
For example, if a woman wants to pursue an active career outside the home,
breast-feeding is often impractical. Infant formula provides the freedom that
many women want, and deserve.
Dear Colleagues:
For me, the major difficulty with this attitude is that it is believed by
so many people. Some hospitals in Philadelphia have closed their maternity
units in the past decade because they were 'non-productive', i.e., didn't
generate enough profit.
In the US, we have toxic capitalism, where profit is deemed more
important than health. This trend is accelerating, and spreading world-wide. It has
turned parenting into a living Harlow experiment; we are now in the second
generation of plastic (instead of the wire) mothering.
Sure, it is very inconvenient if mothers stay home to mother. It takes a
lot of time. I have met many women for whom collecting their milk at work is
not an option that makes any sense for them; they are already working very very
hard: running the house, taking care of other children plus full time
employment. They are already exhausted from working outside the home during a
pregnancy. What and where is the incentive for her to work even harder to pump and
collect her milk?
Sick babies are considered normal, because they are so common. "Lots of
babies have ear infections." And day care will give antibiotics, so even that
doesn't make women stay home. Men aren't (as a general rule) asked to stay home.
I am talking about a majority of people here; of course, there are always
wonderful exceptions.
In my work as a community health nurse, making those crucial
visits with mothers and babies in the first week, I see so much poverty, even when
there is a full time worker in the family. Full-time employment is no
guarantee of any sort of comfort in a life; I have seen a couple that couldn't afford
a bed; I see lots of struggling. People are working hard to make ends meet,
sometimes it is all they can to do breastfeed for a few weeks.
In some respects, we haven't evolved very much beyond a feudal system.
Instead of the lord in the castle, now there is the CEO in the penthouse
office who makes his fortune while the insurance companies make me, the community
health nurse, beg and jump through hoops for authorization to make one more
visit to a baby who isn't doing well.
The slaves struggle to survive and won't quit their jobs and revolt
because they are afraid they won't be able to pay their mortgages; a happy
hospital nurse is a rarity, at least in my community. It seems to me that
employers have figured out a way to make people work harder; have one less worker
than is necessary for each shift; that way, everyone has to work a little harder
and think of all that money saved.
The agency that employs me isn't doing so well either. The agency I
used to work for was paid $60 for one mother-baby visit; I would get $40 of that
(for between 2 and 4 hours of work, including travel and paperwork). After the
new HIPAA regulations went into effect, the agency had at least double the
paperwork; the agency I used to work for made over 12,000 home visits (pre-term
labor, gestational diabetes, PIH monitoring plus well mother/baby visits and
hyperbilrubinemia care were most of the work) and still couldn't make enough
money to survive.
Sometimes I get very blue about all this; what hope for humanity is there
when hospitals view having babies as 'non-productive' and our futures are put
in kennels and raised less kindly than many animals?
Cynical and sad this morning,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE
Craniosacral Therapy practitioner
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