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)