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Subject:
From:
Nikki Lee <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 16 Jun 2002 06:35:07 EDT
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Dear Friends:
     As Barbara Wilson-Clay points out, there are huge ranges of human life
functions. I like the "easy keeper" notion for dairy cows; those that
required nothing extra to outproduce every other cow in the barn.
     The factory appoach, and assembly line concept were developed in the
late 1800's and have been applied to schools and hospitals as well as to
industry. One concept in that framework is that all end results are the same,
so one worker can take care of one part of it, then the next worker down the
line can do the next bit. With cars, this works. One worker screws in left
front door bolts, then the car moves on down the line for the next work to
screw in the right front door bolt. Eventually, the company ends up with more
cars to sell than if each worker had made an entire car alone.
     This is where the idea of starting a woman out in labor in one room,
then sending her to another to deliver, then transferring her to a third to
recover (with the baby going off to a 4th room) came from. The staff in
delivery room would become very efficient at getting babies out, nursery
staff would become experts on newborns and so on. And here is where the
efficiency model breaks down, because people aren't machines. Every woman in
labor is not the same. As Barbara said, some women will spit babies out
easily and others will die. The range of variation is enormous.
     The idea that there can be a one policy or one protocol to handle all
people is absurd. It doesn't work. It doesn't incorporate the huge range of
normal in people.This is where the 10 Steps is such a marvel. It is able to
offer guidelines that include the entire range of breastfeeding behaviors.
     I was remembering all the debates about how many poops is the right
number for a newborn. In adults, the range of normal is from once a week to
every time one sits down on the commode. That "once a day" notion, while
deeply ingrained in many people based on it being a popular medical notion at
one time, just doesn't work for everybody, although it does fit a mechanistic
view of the body.
     Some women can breastfeed no matter what, while others can't. This is
what keeps our jobs challenging and interesting and complicated for we are
the only mammal to scramble our brains with beliefs, cultures, substances,
and rules. Bovine lactation is about genetics and health and hormone balance
in lactation; not what the cow in the next stall is thinking or the attitudes
of other animals who see the cow out in the field nursing her calf.
     Nothing like waking up too early and read LACTNET, is there?
     Warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MSN, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CIMI, CCE, craniosacral therapy
Adjunct faculty, Union Institute and University, Maternal and Child Health:
Lactation Consulting
Supporting the WHO Code and the Mother Friendly Childbirth Initiative

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