I wanted to chime in on the concept of postpartum care from the perspective of a physician who practices in a rural area. There is very limited services available in many rural areas, and even paid services are almost non-existent. Our local health department and WIC provide some services, but they are limited and are limited to special needs infants for the most part. There is no home visiting program of any kind for healthy newborns, and most physicians in the area do not schedule a visit until 2 weeks of age with the newborn. Our small labor and delivery unit does allow moms to bring babies in for weight checks, but this requires the parent to be able to get there under their own power. If you have had a cesarean birth and have no support at home (which unfortunately happens quite often) you may well not be able to bring the baby out alone. Our teen moms are encouraged to go back to school as soon as possible, but there is no follow up program for them (and hence a very high drop out rate) and breastfeeding teen moms cannot get any accomodation from the school to pump. There are no doula services for many miles, either. I just received a memo from our state's Medicaid program, though, that states that as of Jan 1, 2006, hospital grade pump rental will be covered by Medicaid, but standard home visiting services are not. There are so many holes in our safety net that I certainly wouldn't want to jump around here! Unfortunately, I don't think where I live is an exception, but rather the rule for rural areas. Jennifer Tieman Family Physician Mom to 4, including my nursling Caroline Rose (age 32 mos.) *********************************************** 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