As a nurse who worked as a civilian for an Air Force Base hospital, I
wouldn't be too quick to judge the experience one may have birthing.
However, I must also add that I am a proponent of home birthing.  While
working for the Air Force, I was involved in the development of the "First
Time Parent's Program."  This is a home visit-based program that was
developed for new families.  The Air Force took tremendous care to research
this and set it up, and I was involved in both the overall research project
and in setting up a program at the base.  I was very impressed by the
quality of the program.  I understand that this program is now available in
the navy.

I'd also like to add that the hospital was very in tune to birthing in
general, and in fact had midwives in the clinic, and if you were low risk,
you saw the midwives!  Any high risk situation would go to an OB physician.
The problem we had was that many of the AF wives wanted a DOCTOR, and did
not understand how very progressive this was!  The midwives were well
accepted in the community, however as the military has people from all over
the country, many of these people didn't have midwives "back home," so felt
they were getting cheated out of a "normal" birthing experience.

Linda J. Tandy, MSN, RN, IBCLC
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

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