This will likely be TMI for men; so probably more for the ladies. Particularly moms or those otherwise interested in natural childbirth and nursing issues.
Much has been said about this MTV show, but I'm concerned here with a specific episode which seems to speak to the whole series as a whole. It's easy for the obstetrical field to expect full obedience from 16 year olds (not that they don't want it from the rest of us as well) and it gets on my freaking nerves seeing how these girls just do whatever an OB tells them. I've yet to see an episode where one of them has a natural childbirth, much less chooses to nurse their babies. And this is one field (of several) in which some self-education is actually necessary if you're not just going to blindly follow the worst possible advice and make uninformed decisions. It's very easy to push around someone who's in labor, even if she's self-educated *and* has advocates (like a midwife) *and* isn't 16 years old. What chance do they have here?
This episode, "Samantha", dealt with a young girl who was simply told that if she wasn't in labor by her due date (never mind when the baby is actually ready) she was to be induced. These basically arbitrary calendar dates are in charge of the whole thing, I guess. So, on her very due date, off she was bundled to the hospital to begin the whole cascade of interventions that lead directly to our abominable Caesarean rate as well as the ludicrous infant mortality rate we have in this country. (Compare with the infant mortality/Caesarean rates of countries where midwifery and homebirth are the norm - except in clear cases where interventions are actually necessary and you'll see what I mean.)
After being carted off to the hospital, they immediately started the Pitocin drip. Thanks a lot, guys, NOW I don't get my Oxytocin and endorphins and dopamine (our bodies' own morphine/love hormones, which skyrocket during labor and birth when labor occurs naturally) so I can have the super-strong, unnatural Pitocin contractions *without* my body's defenses and be in triple the amount of pain, minus the "love rush" that would normally occur. Triple/quadruple whammy. So as she's laying there screaming with this unnatural labor, they begin talking about when she can "get her" epidural. Of course, an epidural interferes with the labor progression and suppresses the pain of the contractions, which necessitates even MORE Pitocin, which then causes the baby to go into distress from the too-powerful contractions, which means...Caesarean! Just cut it out, quick!
But what really killed me as they were doing all this, the nurse asked her mother "So, did you have natural births?" "Oh no, Caesareans." Naturally. But...what in the heck did she think was NATURAL about what they were doing? This isn't a natural labor in any sense of the word - Pitocin is not what your body produces to start labor. I had one baby naturally and another induced, and you'd better believe the induced one was far more painful and unpleasant. Thankfully I didn't get the epidural because at least I was able to complete the thing without being cut in half. Others having epidurals at 2 centimeters aren't so lucky. And at least I knew a thing or three about nursing a baby, or I'd not have made it through that either, considering the hideous advice they kept trying to feed me.
So what chance, I ask, do these girls have for a natural birth experience and successfully breastfeeding? Not bloody much. Naturally she ended up with a Caesarean.
I'm going to wrap this up with the most ludicrous and objective-killing advice ever given by a famous pediatrician on nursing that I've ever heard given on a national television show, since I'm on the topic already. If you want women to tell you how horrible breastfeeding is, just google "I hate Breastfeeding" or "Breastfeeding Sucks" and you'll find plenty. Most of whom were given hideous advice and had their own nursing processes interfered with from day one (hospitals are notorious for slipping babies bottles on the sly, which in and of itself interferes with the process...then try to tell you you don't have enough milk so you should pump and supplement...which of course interferes with the process even more, making it into a mockery). The very fact that they all say they felt "like cows" says so much...um, we are nothing like cows. If you need to compare it to something compare it to something that makes SENSE like a mother cat and her kittens. The cow analogy is stupid because you're talking about milk that human babies can't even digest unless it's tampered with. These are animals that stand within minutes of birth and have to "butt" their mother's udders with their heads to get the milk to come out - animals that are walking around an hour after they're born. Giving milk our own babies can't even drink. Yeah...that makes a lot of sense.
So anyway, when I heard the renowned T. Berry Brazelton giving the exact OPPOSITE of the right advice to a new nursing mom, my head about exploded. She was greatly dismayed that her newborn was nursing every hour and a half - jeez, I wish I'd been that lucky. Try every 45 minutes (as well as literally the entire night...fortunately I had the sense to take the baby to bed with me so I didn't have to be awake for it. No, you don't roll over on the baby.) It takes time to establish a milk supply and for the baby to gain the experience to effectively get the milk. For that time you sometimes have to stay what seems hooked up for most of the day and/or night. Which is why it's a good idea to pencil in at least two months of downtime after giving birth, if not more. At least if you want to succeed at feeding your own baby for free, and in a way that is usually quite pleasant once it's firmly established.
So, his advice to this woman? Oh, every 1 1/2 hours is too much (that's odd, because it only takes 1 - 1 1/2 hours for the breast milk to pass through the baby altogether - so, uh, YES, the baby is actually hungry after that) so HOLD BACK FOR AT LEAST 3 HOURS...why? So the breast will be FULLER, thus the baby will get more.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Absolute and UTTER ignorance of how a milk supply is established and how it self-adjusts. You know how it works? Just like a free market - supply and demand. If you WAIT until it's full, your body gets the signal almost IMMEDIATELY that it's MAKING TOO MUCH MILK and it needs to STOP making so much of it. He basically gave her a prescription for STOPPING breastfeeding, not for doing it successfully. You want more milk? You want to stop having to do it so often? DO IT MORE...keep those puppies EMPTY, and empty them even sooner than the baby asks for it...the signal goes out "Not making enough! Make more, stat!" And that's exactly what happens. Which is why the first couple months you're doing it fairly constantly - the body hasn't adjusted to this whole system yet. Once it does, you're in business. And no, it's *extraordinarily* rare that there's a genuine medical reason for a lack of adequate supply, so don't even tell me that every woman who says her baby was simply starving really was - that's really not something that happens in any kind of common fashion; as I say, it's very very rare that that's the case. We'd be extinct already if it were that common. It's bad advice and bad interventions that lead to this epidemic of women's bodies that just don't work properly (for labor, birth and nursing.) We all know that *sometimes* interventions in all three areas are necessary and life-saving - that's what they're there for. Could we start saving them for the actual times when they're NEEDED? With nursing it takes maybe two days for your supply to adjust up or down according to whether you're making too much (full breasts) or too little (empty breasts.) For a doctor to give such hideous advice fills me with ire.
But it's so ubiquitous that we're just used to all of it. With my second child, the nurse came in after about 8 hours and asked me how many "times" he'd nursed...uh, who's counting? Whenever he wants it, he gets it. And lots of skin-to-skin contact (another thing someone isn't telling the doctors for some reason) to stimulate supply. After all, there's nothing there after an induced labor, to start with - gotta get things started as quickly as possible. So she was like, "Um, don't do THAT!" I said, "Why not?" "Because...because you'll get sore nipples." Uh...ok. I'll just follow my own counsel, thanks. It never happened, fortunately; he was too lazy to suck that hard anyway. Fortunately the pediatrician was from India and was a lot smarter than that about these issues - she just said "Good. Nursing on demand is the best thing while they're new, and they tend to self-schedule more in a few months." At least somebody knows what they're talking about.
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