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Subject:
From:
"Jennifer Tow, IBCLC" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 19 Aug 2001 23:56:26 EDT
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In a message dated 8/18/1 4:42:17 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:

Sue wrote:

<< The other component that we must consider is how families will be

received into a Medical model of care. Are the empowered enough to

communicate their needs. And how can we make them feel comfortable doing

this? >>

My question is--why do we accept the medical model of care? I don't want
women to feel comfortable walking into that model--I want us to refuse to
accept it.

<<We are advocates.>>

How can anyone who works for an institution be an advocate for someone else
within that institution? When I worked in a hospital, I maintained my
position as a consultant so as to avoid such conflict. Even then the pressure
was severe to support the institution over the mother. Being an advocate is
part of why I only lasted 4 years.

<<If we are not - we are only doing part of our job. >>

Well, is that really true? Would the institution truly define your job as
that of an advocate? I doubt it.

<< It is not fair to send people into a model of care that we have not
prepared them for. >>

I agree. But the only way to prepare them is to tell them the truth. What
hospital employee is really capable of doing that? How many hospital
employees warn parents that they might be lied to, coerced, misled, even
threatened to get their "compliance"? Can a hospital employee really give the
history of medicalized birth--can she tell parents its risks and how utterly
unecessary it usually is? Can she tell parents that statistically homebirth
is safer? Can she tell them the politics of obstetrics and how surgeons took
control of birth in the US? Can she tell them, as Rachel reminds us, that we
are the world outcasts when it comes to birth? Can she say that the WHO
advocates midwifery care as the standard for all low-risk birthing women? Can
she talk about the impact of interventions on breastfeeding and attachment?
So long as we "make nice" with the institutions which perpetrate birth trauma
on mothers and babies we will never see the empowerment we talk about.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

 I would enjoy seeing further dialogue on this.

We are pilotting the Mother Friendly Childbirth Initiative.  Very

Interesting.  Lots of challenges. >>

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