Jan wrote:
"Perhaps a "good" birth experience isn't something anyone wants any
more -- perhaps, as this
article pointed out, we are interested ONLY in a healthy mom and
healthy baby
-- and I agree, that is an appropriate goal -- but can't we have an
enjoyable
experience along with it? Can't it be a GOOD birth experience with a
healthy
mother and healthy baby?"
This is where I think the langauge becomes our enemy. I do not believe
we have healthy mothers and babies after these births--not ever. There
is always a need for healing, but since we have a highly skewed
definition of healthy, healing does not take place. I would not say
that we have lowered the bar on what is healthy, because we have never
achieved the level of consciousness about birth that human intelligence
and awareness should dictate. I am not advocating a return to something
that never was. I think this is also where those who defend medicalized
birth create a diversion--claiming that birth is dangerous and that
medicalized birth has saved countless lives. It's not a worthy argument
for an intelligent person to make, b/c medicalizarion of normal birth
does not save lives, nor does it enhance the human experience. I would
argue that it dose no better than diminish human potential and likely
does far worse.
I have done the birth process work originated by Ray Castellino and
having experienced both my own process and that of the other
participants, I can tell you the the tauma is there, buried deeply in
many cases, informing our world view at all times. How can a human
being be helathy when his first expeirence of the world is abandonment
or loss, how can it be healthy when the mother's body feels the loss of
her infant (taken of any numaber of absurd reasons) but does not have
the words within our cultural context to voice her despair? How can we
be geklathy when the flow of cortisol meant to be turnd off by
maternal-infant contact remains to flood the system? What implications
do these things have for the formation of attachment and the potential
for trust, love and sacrifice?
I believe that when an infant must utliize his reosurces to compensate
for our ignorance, that energy is not available to him to optimize his
phsycological and emotional growth. Using the example of
cortisol--cortisol is essential to the process of birth and is integral
to bonding. As the mother and baby connect, cortisol shuts down and
the baby shifts from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. Mammals
do not eat in a sympathetic state--that is the fight or flight
response. What if separation is the infant's first experience and
cortisol does not shut down when it should and the infant remains in a
sympathetic state, Yet, he is expected to eat. Eating is essential--but
actually normalizing the endocrine and nervous systems may well be more
essential. We just have no compass for this and begin to demand that
the infant eat. What does the infant's body learn when eatng is forced
or coereced in this state? Does his innate knowing of when to eat
become undermined? Adults eat all of the time under stress. When this
happens, we cannot digest our food--digestion is a prasympatheic
process. So, how does this one tiny aspect of birth trauma affect
feeding behaviour?
What are the long-term implications for digestion? Is this perhaps a
cause of many of the digestive probelms we see in infsnts today? And
this does not even address the affect on the other of the cortisol
rsponse. When one begins to consider the entire hormonal milieu, it
boggles the mind to consider how much harm we may well be doing. Nurses
or IBCLC who intutively know that what this mom and baby need most are
each other and time--and trust--are not supported in their approach.
The baby must eat!!! So, I would agree that we as LCs have become far
too interventive and far too mediclized. I do not see how this will
stop until we choose to truly know what birth is all about--and claim
it as the sacred right of passage it is. When we do, we will protect
the family from medicalization in every way possible. b/c the
consequences will be intolerable. What is required is a whole new
definition of a healthy mother and baby.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT USA
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