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


________________________________________________________________________
Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email 
and IM. All on demand. Always Free.

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html