Frankly, I've been kind of surprised at all the comments from this group
about the mother who needed to take a class or go back to school immediately
after the baby was born. Living and working in an area that has a very high
proportion of students (Cornell and Ithaca College), as well as many
owner-run businesses, I have seen this situation to be not all that
uncommon. (The most extreme one I can think of is a woman who had to be
discharged by noon the morning after giving birth, because she & her husband
owned a newly-opened restaurant and she had to get home to work the
lunch-time rush!) What has impressed me about these women is the
circumstances under which they've managed to pull it off - AND do a good job
of it!

Do I think that this immediate return to work/school after giving birth is a
great thing, for either baby or mom? No, definitely not! But the mother-baby
relationship has an awe-inspiring resilience, and I've seen both
breastfeeding and bonding flourish in circumstances that would make me shake
my head and think "no way". I guess what I've learned from working with
these women is that it's *their* life and *their* baby, not mine. It's far
more productive to help them figure out ways they can make this work than to
cluck around about the negative aspects. Very rarely does it help a woman
succeed with either breastfeeding or her other goals in life to approach the
situation with an "oh my gosh, how can you even think of doing that to your
baby and yourself?!" attitude.

We can only be of use when we are able to get past that response, to help
the mother do what *she* perceives that she needs to do. It wouldn't be my
choice (I chose to stay home and get by on welfare and other social services
when my babies were little, and I'd make the same choice again today), but
we need to learn to simultaneously help the mother talk through what she's
planning in a realistic way and then help her do what she wants to do. And
we need always to remember that another woman's experience may be very
different from our own.

Valerie talked about talking with women to try help them understand what it
will be like once the baby is born, and I certainly agree that we need to
educate them about a newborn's needs, and try to give them some picture of
what that can be like. But, after many years of working with women both
prenatally and after birth, I have to say that I've given up on thinking I
can *really* convey to a woman what that time can be like. They can't really
hear it. I always liken it to how when I was pregnant for the first time,
the instructor of our childbirth class said that one out of the ten of us
couples (this was 22+ years ago, before C/S rates skyrocketed) would likely
have a C/S delivery. I didn't even really pay attention to the class on
Caesarian birth, because I was dead sure that it wouldn't be ME - me, the
nature-girl, the most granola of all granolas, the Earth Mother if ever
there was one.  Well, guess who ended up with the C/S! And guess who had no
clue that anything on god's green earth could be like THAT! Before my baby
was born, I thought I knew all about babies - I'd been a baby fanatic all my
life, I'd cared for babies professionally for years and years (that was what
I did before I became a nurse), I thought I really had a grip on things.
Hah!


Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY

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