Hi all, I have been thinking about the baby bath thread and also about the epidural rates as well. I keep wondering why they both bother me so much and why they are both embraced by our many peoples current thoughts on birthing experiences. I think it is because our world in general is just too tidy and packaged. We don't ever have to deal with many of the "earthy" things of life. Not very many of us are mucking out stalls, cleaning the cat litter is a pretty sterile thing now, even changing baby's diapers, with the disposables and the nicely scented wipes is not as yukky as when we were using cloth diapers. We expect to be comfortable and pain free. We don't even expect to have to exert ourselves too much, because we don't have too. We tell our children at the doctor's , 'it's okay, this won't hurt" and it usually doesn't. They come to expect that it won't hurt. We have good medical procedures that protect us from seeing too much blood, or other bodily fluids. (well, we see lots of blood on TV and movies, but that is another post) We package our meat in tidy little packages, sometimes even prepared and frozen. No cleaning the chickens or gutting the fish for us. We even package our breasts, wonder bras for the sexy packaging, sports bras to keep them out of the way. Some women relate so poorly to thier breasts that they call them their "chests". It is no wonder that when it comes to childbirth, which involves pain, responding to your body in a very basic human way, and is pretty messy at the end, women cannot deal with this. It ties in with getting a clean and good smelling little "package" after it is all over too (ie, the baby bath). It is probably too much to expect many of the women of this generation to think like we do. They have been programmed to think differently by the world that they live in. Many of us may see this as sad, and that a great human experience is being missed because of it, but I am not sure that as long as we live in this tidy little world, attitudes will change too much. Just my $.02. (when did they take the cent key of the computer keyboards??? I miss it. ) Smiles, Merilee Basel, CH. *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html