In fact, Diane, I *did* picture the vet saying almost those exact words in
response to the new information!  Because, having been in the "medical
world" for over 20 years now, that's what my experience has led me to
expect.

<I think that for some reason I truly can't fathom, the medical world has an
underlying hostility toward breastfeeding and breastmilk that doesn't exist
toward, say, exercise or blood.  And I don't think I'm paranoid.>

So why the hostility? Well, in "real life" (which is where BFing of course
ACTUALLY takes place, as opposed to the 'medical world'), it seems to me
that almost always what lies under hostility is fear. If that's true in this
instance, as in all the rest of life, what's the fear - what is threatening
or scary about BFing, breastmilk, the growing lactation profession, etc?
Maybe it's loss of control; or,more accurately, loss of the *illusion* of
control or expertise that the medical world has come to believe it has over
women and their bodily processes. It doesn't really, of course, but it's the
tearing of the tissue of this illusion that we experience as hostility. I
think. (Or maybe they're just afraid that we'll earn all of the big bucks
money away from them! Joke!)

Women are scary! Traditionally, women's power is awesome and unfathomable
and unmatched by anything men do - that's why men try to subjugate and
dominate them. And traditional western medicine is 100% a male-designed
set-up - the hierarchy, the trial-by-fire of medical training, the
competitive structure of the field, the whole thing just reeks of
testosterone! But birth and breastfeeding are all about WOMEN, so it just
provokes over-reaction. The bigger the fear, the more the hostility.

The other thing that underlies hostility is a sense of loss or deprivation,
of "not-getting-mine". As I've said before, I think that "we" (most of us in
the post-industrial world) didn't "get ours" when we were little. So we're
suspicious when it looks like someone else might be getting it all - the
love, the food, the energy, all that stuff that we give to our babies &
children when we nurse them. The people I've met who are most hostile to
BFing, in the medical world and outside of it, are the ones who most clearly
are just stark raving jealous. It stirs people up, makes 'em uneasy. And I
think when you add those two things together - the fear of loss of control +
the deep squirmy dis-ease many people feel (which is their buried sense of
loss of total unconditional love and nurturing that we all should have) -
you get this intense, stubborn aversion that looks like hostility.

I don't think it happens only with breastfeeding stuff, either. When the
information about sleep position and SIDS started to come out, I was just
automatically skeptical; when I was growing up, and when my kids were babies
and when I learned to be a nurse, babies went on their tummies. Period. So
when the new stuff started coming out, it was all against my previous
experience and training, and I had to *really* work hard not to pooh-pooh
it. Still have to work to remember it, and it still feels really wierd to
leave a baby on its back! So there's that initial learning curve, and I
guess those in other fields are still way back in the painful, resistant
part.

It's true that the difference, as Diane points out, is that I've *bothered*
to learn and change my practices to conform to new information. Why is it
that we seem to manage change more positively? Dunno, but I suspect it has
to do with being mostly women. In traditional western medicine, women who
enter the field tend to adapt to the male model that forms the basis of the
structure. (Even nurses, who are mostly women but working in the masculine
structure.) I'm thinking that maybe those of us that are hands-on with moms
& babies operate out of a more womanly "energy". 'Scuse the "psychobabble",
if that's what it sounds like. So research is gender-neutral, but in the
hands of us who are right there with the women & babies, in my experience
the *practice* of lactational science emerges as a strongly female arena.
Like the difference between OBs and midwives - midwives aren't just "lesser"
doctors, they operate on a different set of premises.

But what do I know? Just thinking about it. No, Diane, I don't think you're
paranoid!

Cathy Bargar RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY

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