Lee,
You are so right! I find it so disheartening to hear the constant "meet 
the mother where she is" argument, b/c rather than a way of meeting her 
in a place where we can communicate, reach her, support her and empower 
her, it is so often used as a way to excuse ourselves form having the 
burden of speaking the truth. Who are we protecting? I would argue it 
is not the mother and baby, but the system in which we have learned to 
survive. When I first became an IBCLC, I hoped dearly that I would 
never have to recertify--I have so many other things I do in my life 
and in my work as a healer that I would be happy to be uneeded in this 
way. I think that itis terribly seductive to become a part of any 
system, b/c it makes it difficult to work for the abolition of that 
same system.

When I did hospital labor support, I found I had to be very conscious 
of my own tendency to watch the EFM, b/c it was there and seemed to 
create a compass by which we could all orient ourselves. It is just too 
easy to be seduced, too easy to find a common frame of reference by 
which to all agree, too easy not to have to be aware, intuitive, 
present, responsible. Too easy to not even see the mother, not to have 
an organic, feeling, human being as the frame of reference. I tell 
mothers all of the time that babies are low tech people, usually 
requiring low tech solutuons. I know with all of my heart that 
everything matters--how we gestate matters, how we birth matters and 
how we nurture matters. Every single intervention that is unecessary 
does harm (and most are, inlcuding almost every intervention anyone of 
us has ever witnessed or experienced). Even those that er necessary do 
harm, but if we pay attention, we can work with intention to mitigate 
the harm, to facilitate healing. When we ignore the importance of 
pregnancy and birth as an opportunity for growth and healing, we are 
not "doing no harm".

At the same time, truth is subjective--it depends very much on where we 
stand. I have a client whose journey through a traumatic birth and 
breastfeeding difficulties has been a great gift in her life as a 
mother, as it has challenged her to heal her own childhood wounds. Her 
baby has never received 100% breastmilk and was only put to breast for 
about a week. She pumped for 9 months. I have never ever lied to her. 
She knows there is a loss and that there are risks to AF. She would 
never have chosen to give even one drop of AIM to her child. But, 
sometimes lessons and gifts come in ways we could never expect. Would 
she have been better served if I had hedged and told her that her that 
it was really okay--didn't matter all that much, that her birth trauma 
was unrelated? Wounds present opportunities to heal. I think that when 
we pretend that why the mother feels disempowered doesn't matter, why 
she is struggling doesn't matter. that there really is no wound so long 
as there is a "healthy" baby (sadly, we have a very poor way of 
assessing this in our culture), then we eradicate that mother's 
opportunity to heal and to grow. I believe witnessing the mother's 
wounds as she reveals them is very much our responsibility.

In the long run, I think if we are committed to public health, we need 
to know what that really means. Artificial feeding is destructive, in 
any amount. Medicalized birth is destructive. Unattached mothers and 
babies are a grave tragedy for all of us. Women need to know these 
things and so what if the perpetrators of these brutalities don't want 
us to say so. So what? If we all would say it, then what would "they" 
do? Who would be fired and who hired? Can something be necessary and 
destructive? Yes, of course. But, it is the slipperiest slope of all to 
talk about meeting mothers where they are, to talk about "necessary 
interventions" when they become our refuge from telling the truth.

Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html