> The amount of intervention that goes on in
>the first days depresses me a lot.  This is carried out by well-meaning
>hospital midwives who want to help the mother breastfeed, but  do not
>realise that less can be more...

Comments like this always remind me of 1) a comment by non-interventionist
French obstetrician Michel Odent and 2) our family gerbils.

1)  At a conference some years ago, Odent described some species of monkey -
I forget which one - and the strong urge of its females to birth in private.
 If they're forced to birth publicly, the other monkeys crowd around in high
excitement and intervene as much as possible, even to the extent of eating
the placenta and perhaps the baby.  I've always pictured those monkeys in
scrub suits with a bright light overhead...

2)  Our "best" gerbil mother produced large, healthy, well-tended litters.
Indeed, she lost only one baby ever.  At her first birth, a second female in
the cage, whom we termed the midwife, showed great interest in the process
and kept trying to move the nest to a different location.  Midwife would
tote babies to the right, mother would tote them back to the left.  They
even wore a path across the cage.  The next morning, one of the babies was
dead along the path - a victim, we decided, of iatrogenic overzealousness.
After that, we always made sure birthing gerbils were alone in their cage.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY

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