On 16-9-98 Joy wrote:
>No, another, more empowered, well-read mom wouldn't have aquiesced<

I know what you are saying, and it could well be statisitically more likely, but
I think one of the scariest things about what happens to women in
childbirth/post-natally, is that they feel they are entering a world in which
their own knowledge and previous sense of themselves is not valued or felt to be
relevant by the people who are there to care for them.

Women are sent through a system which seemed to me, as I went through it with my
first baby 13 years ago, to be *designed* to disempower women, de-stablise their
sense of self, and to encourage them to accept the standard expereince being
dished out by the hospital as 'birth'.  I am a well educated person, etc. and I
found myself -- after 36 hours without sleep and a baby who (in my retrospective
opinion) wanted to be tucked up in bed with his mummy (sensible chap -- he still
is) and not in some cot -- Oh, and preferably with the chance to graze all night
(and why not?) being asked to make choices about feeding my son in a state of
exhaustion, disorientation and alone (at 3 a.m.).  So I took the only option
offered to me (well, if she won't give the baby any food, said the midwife to
the auxilliary nurse, we'll just leave her on her own) and gave a bottle.
Analysing this, as I have many times, I wonder how I, a stroppy sort usually,
gave in so meekly on something so important to me.  Basically, it was
concentration camp mentality.  Be subservient and fawning to the guards and
maybe they won't be so harsh and you'll be out sooner.

(In my case, when I became pregnant again, I was so frightened being once again
in the situation of being treated like a sub-normal piece of meat that I had a
lovely home delivery with two wonderful midwives -- also on the NHS)

Breastfeeding is not nurtured unless women are empowered through their
experience of pregnancy and birth.  All too often women's previous experience
means they are ill-equipt to participate in their breastfeeding partnership, and
look to outsiders to conduct or even control this for them.

Ok, I will get off *my* soapbox now.

Magda Sachs
The Breastfeeding Network (UK)