[log in to unmask] writes:

<< I find this injecting of women with birth control medication most
repugnant.
 I do not believe that women will go straight home and start doing it,
 especially in North America, where doctors inflict their own method of birth
 control, the episiotomy.  What's the bloody rush?  Does this doctor think he
 will influence the world's population by doing this? >>

It's a mindset, Dr. Jack, especially when you are talking about mothers on
public assistance (welfare), which a simply amazing number of these "Depo
within 12 hrs of birth/losing milk despite best efforts to bf" mothers are.
It is not a coincidence--Depo-Provera is one of the most efficacious (read
reliable) contraceptives we have access to, and the idea that women have
babies so they can get more welfare (in this country, around $42/month in cash
benefits) is still a prevalent one.  Ergo, staff comes in with this shot
within hours of delivery, when mom is still groggy/blissfully unanalytical,
tells her breastfeeding offers NO contraceptive effect even in the first few
weeks, and fearmonger her into doing it.  I have witnessed this on more than
one occasion--in every case it has been teen moms on Medicaid (public aid).  I
have gone so far as to leave the room to get a reference as to Depo causing
milk supply to diminish, and come back to find the nurse gone, the young mom
freshly "shot up".  She was crying, I was crying, and when I asked her why she
had let the nurse do it even though she had specifically said to both me and
the r.n. that she did not want to, she said, "She scared me--she said I was
going to end up with another birth like this one" --(this had been a traumatic
premature birth, 12 wks early, in a 17 yr old mom)-- "and told me 'hurry up,
are you going to let that lady' {me} 'talk you into going home without some
form of contraception?'"  No, another, more empowered, well-read mom wouldn't
have acquiesced.  But how often do any of you work with those kinds of moms?

She pumped faithfully every two-three hours for three weeks (with a hospital
grade pump) only to see her supply diminish so much that she soon got nothing
for her premature baby.  I could see no reason for her failure to produce milk
(she was adament about pumping, holding the baby, looking at pictures of him,
etc.) except for this chemical cocktail injected into her so soon after birth.

Off my soapbox, for now,

Joy Berry-Parks LLLL, Arkansas
Anthropology Apprentice/Relentless Breastfeeding Zealot
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Life is an offensive, directed against the
repetitious mechanism of the universe.
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
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