In a message dated 2/12/2006 2:26:03 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
what happens when babies don't feed because
they are unable to turn off the sympathetic response they are having to
the trauma of their births? What happens when the infant's first
experience of the world is abandonment by the mother (his experience,
not the mother's intention), what happens when her first experience is
pain and disregard for her communication?, what is the price that is
paid when the hormonal melieu of birth is completely circumvented so
that the mother feels she has never bonded (and perhaps she never has),
what happens when the biochemical interplay that literally turns on our
humanity is disregarded? When all of this is going on, I am surprised
that any baby bf's or that any mother bonds at all.
Dear Friends:
Right on target, Jennifer.
It is amazing that the US has as much breastfeeding as it does,
especially when the constant interference of many hospitals' postpartum practice is
added to the insult of injury and birth.
If you fell in love with a wonderful mate, and had a horrific automobile
accident a few hours later, requiring months of rehabilitation, what would
happen to that love?
Dr. Sarah Morrison, from Case Western Reserve University, presented at
the International Conference on Breastfeeding and Human Lactation about the
results of a study she did on a postpartum unit. She posted an observer outside
the door of the mother's room from 8 AM to 10 PM and counted the number of
interruptions: people going in and out, telephone calls etc. etc. The average
number of interruptions was 71. Medical staff interrupted the most, followed
by hospital staff (housekeeping and dietary and lab etc.). Family and
visitors were the third reason for interruptions.
How in the world can someone start an intimate process in a fishbowl?
Particularly after being invaded and injured?
In the film "Weeping Camel", the mother had a difficult labor with her
baby, and rejected the infant afterwards. I don't know if the rejection was
the result of the long and difficult birth, the human intervention of pulling
the baby out, or the energy from the camera recording the whole event.
However, there was a ritual that reconnected the mother with her baby. I wish we had
such a ritual here in the US..............the best I can do involves
craniosacral therapy, somatoemotional release, biological nurturing (the mother
pretending she is still pregnant and keeping the baby s2s as close to 24/7 as
possible), remedial co-bathing, and of course expressing her milk to keep her
breasts awake and working.
In hospitals and at home, I have seen that even s2s doesn't always work
to reconnect the baby and mother. I have seen babies have a huge emotional
release and crawl to breast and self-attach just like the Baby's Choice video,
and have had the mother wean the next day!
That is how brutal birth has become.
warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE
Maternal-Child Adjunct Faculty Union Institute and University
Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human Lactation
www.breastfeedingalwaysbest.com
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