Re: Subpar Breast Milk, Birth Choices, Breastfeeding Success

[Guest guest]

Respectfully, most mothers only partly get it. Giving birth vaginally,

without drugs, changes women- biologically. The drugs that they give

women during childbirth, such as pitocin and epidurals, halt the oxytocin

cycle. Choosing a c-section skips this hormone cycle altogether.

Oxytocin is the hormone of attachment and love. Ann Marie said, 'Like it

or not, most women are not able or willing (for whatever reason) to do

extended breast feeding in this day and age.' The 'for whatever reason'

you speak of, is that medical culture is denying women their biology. By

denying them the oxytocin cycle, not only do they inhibit breastfeeding,

but they inhibit bonding and mothering as well. With a complete oxytocin

cycle, perhaps some of the women who are not working for food, but who

are working for our anti-enviromental 2 cars large vinyl house multiple

gadget lifestyle, would choose to struggle less for material wealth and

more for their maternal right to be with their baby. We know why women

choose caesareans- they are scared, coerced by lack of viable choices,

and steamrollered by 400 years of male medical authority. But we also

know a little of why other women will struggle, fight, live in their

cars, chop wood, haul water, etc. not to be separated, not to hand their

baby over to strangers. These women are being coerced by evolution- or

God- with the most gigantic dose of oxytocin and beta-endorphins that

they will experience in their lives.

This small e-article details some of the hormonal changes that happen

during labor:

http://www.midwiferytoday.com/enews/enews0317.asp?a=1 & r=1 & e=1 & q=oxytocin+

cycle#main

This article is about how the immense surge of oxytocin effects

attachment:

http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/postpartum_rebirth.asp?a=1 & r=1 & e=1

& q=oxytocin+cycle

Here's a couple exerpts non-technical articles by Dr. Michel Odent,

childbirth expert and reformer

\

http://birthpsychology.com/primalhealth/primal13.html :

In 1979 we learned that the levels of beta-endorphins increase during

labor (Csontos, Rust, Hollt, et al., 1979; Akil, , Barchas, & Li,

1979). We already knew, since 1977, that beta-endorphin stimulates the

release of prolactin (Rivier, Vale, Ling, Brown, & Guillemin, 1977). It

became therefore possible to interpret a chain of events: physiological

pain in labor (system of protection against pain) and the release of the

key hormone of lactation.

Swedish studies, published in 1996, demonstrated that two days after

birth, when the baby is at the breast, women who gave birth vaginally

release oxytocin in a pulsatile (i.e., effective) way, compared with

women who gave birth by emergency caesarean section (Rivier, Vale, Ling,

Brown, & Guillemin, 1977). Furthermore there is a correlation between the

way oxytocin is released two days after birth and the duration of

exclusive breastfeeding.

The same Swedish team found that the caesarean women lacked a significant

rise in prolactin levels at 20-30 minutes after the onset of

breastfeeding (Nissen, Uvnas-Moberg, Svensson, Stock, Widstrom, &

Winberg, 1996).

An Italian team demonstrated that the amount of beta-endorphin in the

colostral milk of mothers who gave birth vaginally is significantly

higher than colostrum levels of mothers who underwent caesarean section

(Zanardo, Nicolussi, Giacomin, Faggian, Favaro, & Plebani, 2001). It is

probable that one of the effects of milk opiates is to induce a sort of

addiction to mother's milk. One can anticipate that the more addicted to

the breast the newborn baby becomes, the longer and easier the

breastfeeding.

http://birthpsychology.com/primalhealth/primal4.html - here's Odent's

conclusion:

" We are at a turning point in the history of childbirth. Until recently,

in order to have a baby, a woman was obliged to release a complex

cocktail of hormones that play a key role in the initiation of lactation.

Today, in many industrialised countries, for the first time in the

history of mankind, most women give birth without releasing such

hormones. Either they rely on substitutes for natural hormones (drip of

synthetic oxytocin plus epidural anaesthesia) or they give birth by

caesarean section. The issue of breastfeeding cannot be dissociated from

the issue of childbirth. "

This is an incredible handout on breastfeeding after a caesarean- if you

read it, it seems so incredibly simple to hand something like this to

women at the hospital after their surgery:

http://www.plus-size-pregnancy.org/CSANDVBAC/bfaftercesarean.htm

Dawn, there is a good chance they gave your baby sugar water in the

nursery, on a pacifier or in a bottle. They don't even ask. . . it's

common practice in many hospitals! Why would any baby want to work for

nursing after that!

I beg any woman who is planning on giving birth to read the work of Henci

Goer. The knowledge in her two books The Thinking Woman's Guide to a

Better Birth and Obstetric Myths versus Research Realities can arm you

against unnecessary obstetric intervention, possibly saving you from a

lifetime of consequences.

More women initiate breastfeeding in this country, and all over the

world, than use raw milk, but the WAPF, and many in this movement,

believe we can change one situation but not the other? So we should just

accept what people do and say in regards to breastfeeding, 'like it or

not', but we should argue and fight and sign petitions for raw milk?

We nursing mothers, who know what was stolen from you when you were

coerced in to heroic birth interventions, and not taught compensatory

breastfeeding practices. . . . we are angry for you, and we grieve for

your loss and the loss of this process all over our planet.

Desh