Having experienced both:  an un-medicated hospital birth and one at home,
there is no way to try to explain the differences in the emotions
surrounding the birth, one's newborn, one's mate and the helpers.  They were
very different.

Diane wrote:
"It took me 6 weeks to love each of my babies, 25 and 28 years ago."

As with Diane, though totally breastfeeding, my bonding with baby #1 in 1974
also took way too long--several weeks. Daughter #1 was also whisked away at
birth for more than 4 hours.  After reading Doris Haire's *The Cultural
Warping of Childbirth* I really had some "ah-ha" moments about how we
struggled at first and how the abnormal interventionist birthing practices
caused it all--all for doctor and hospital expediency.

"I dreamt that my firstborn actually belonged to my college roommate."  

And I am so glad that Diane brought up this dream factor.  The sub-conscious
is so important to look at with an event as intimate and profound as labor
and birthing.  My very first dreams were about my OB who attended my husband
and I for the delivery.  I had romantic dreams about him being my *savior*
through the birth.  Fortunately, when remembering these dreams once awake, I
was both mystified and disgusted, and did not try to initiate anything with
my doc.  It really bothered me for years that he was in the limelight of my
first dreams, rather than my newborn and my husband who so very tenderly
helped care for her and for me.  Once home, it also affected my dreams about
my newborn and where she was (and who she was) in our bed.  

How many women get fixated (imprinted is probably a better word) on their
male physician from just such an event as their prenatal care and delivery
and do act upon it?  Probably plenty.  And they don't know where those
feelings come from.  No such intrusive dreams with daughter #2 who was
birthed at home. 

This aspect of mis-imprinting and dis-connection at birth needs to be fixed
in our culture.  I don't know if it would have ever righted itself without
the breastfeeding.  The two women in my family, who did not go on to
breastfeed, never got to fix this disconnection--and their children are
paying the price now as adults.  When I told my OB about what I
inappropriately experienced about him in my dreams he had to admit this same
lamb knowledge as Diane posted:  "Sheep need to smell themselves on their
lambs or the mother's reject them."  He had the book knowledge, but could
not interpret it for his human patient care.

-------- 

"A mismanaged birth, on a mammalian level, involves the withholding of
normal birth location, sights, sensations, smells, and/or touch.  And our
standard births actually make a point of withholding all of those!  The only
thing that causes most American mothers to accept their babies, I'm
convinced, is the fact that we know intellectually that the baby must belong
to us.  If we want to improve breastfeeding, we *have* to be part of the
force that improves birth.  Our mammalian heritage requires it."

These needs to be the subject of someone's thesis!
Judy

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