i saw a baby recently whose mother was given demerol during the birth, absolutely comatose, it did take him several days to begin to respond to the world. dr. hale said at a conference once in explaining the difficult effects of demerol that there was no reason to use this drug as there are plenty of better substitutes, the metabolite is potent and has a very long life. as to gestational age, my one untampered-with birth was of a 42 or 43 week baby (depending on whose dates you believe), my others were both past 41 weeks when various things caused their births. i have heard it is familial, and my mother had longer than normal pregnancies as well. it works well, you have great big babies who are practically ready for kindergarten. its nice to see that its not ME complaining about hospitals. see? i am not imagining things. i had a breastfeeding class with two couples; one had a child already. when the subject of birth came up i pointed out that using drugs during delivery can indeed affect the baby. that didn't cause much response until i showed the self-attachment video. riveting! it caused a major shift in their perceptions of "normal, hospitalized" birthing. carol brussel IBCLC *********************************************** 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