2011 - Talk Birth

2. http://mothering.com/breastfeeding/breathing-i-am-nursing-my-baby-breastfeeding-spiritual-practice
3. http://talkbirth.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/how-to-meditate-with-a-baby/
4. http://www.facebook.com/PortraitsAndPaws
Lynda M O (2011-08-04 17:57:16)
Well-written, honest and thoughtful... thanks for sharing this post.
Jenny (2011-08-06 20:36:04)
I like the part about fierce teaching... and breasts being a scandal. :) Breastfeeding is definitely an intimate endeavor.
peacefulbeginnings (2011-08-10 09:11:36)
Great post, as always!
Motherhood as Meditation « Talk Birth (2011-10-30 12:03:22)
[...] Surrender? Book Review: Mindful Motherhood Book Review: 10 Steps to Joy and Inner Peace for Mothers
Breastfeeding Toward Enlightenment How to meditate with a [...]
Health Care or Medical Care? (2011-08-05 08:36)
For quite some time, breastfeeding advocates have been working to [1]change the language of infant feeding
to reflect that breastfeeding is the biological norm (and formula feeding is the replacement/substitute). This
includes sharing about the ”risks of formula feeding” rather than the ”benefits of breastfeeding” as well as
encouraging research that no longer uses formula-fed babies as the control group or considers formula to
be a benign variable (i.e. the babies in the breastfed group of many research projects also received some
formula, but since our culture views formula as the ”norm,” this was not seen as a conflict). I love [2]Diane
Wiessinger’s example—would we ever see a research project titled ”Clear air and the incidence of lung cancer.”
No! Problem behavior is linked to problem outcomes in other areas of research, so it would be ”Smoking
and the incidence of lung cancer.” However, we routinely see research titles like ”Breastfeeding and the rate
of diabetes” rather than linking problem to outcome–”Infant formula and the rate of diabetes.”
Similarly, ”intactivists” (people who oppose circumcision) have pointed out that there should be no need
to refer to some boys as ”uncircumcised”—being uncircumcised is the biological norm, it is ”circumcised”
boys that should received the special word/label. (On a related side note, I have written about ”pleonasms”–
words that contain unnecessary repetition–and birth and breastfeeding in a [3]previous post.)
So, this brings me to another need for a change in the common language–correctly identifying whether
we are really talking about ”Health Care” or ”Medical Care.” This was originally brought to my attention by
Jody McLaughlin the publisher of [4]Compleat Mother magazine. We have a tendency to refer to ”health
care” and to ”health care reform” and ”health insurance” and and ”health care providers” and ”health care
centers,” when it reality what we are truly referring to is ”medical care”—medical care reform, medical insurance,
medical care providers, and medical care centers. As [5]Jody says (paraphrasing), ”we do not have
a HEALTH care system in this country, we have a MEDICAL care system.” She also makes an interesting
point about a trend to re-name medical care systems with names that use the word ”health” instead:
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This is what I have observed: Our local facility was called Trinity HOSPITAL, later re-named
Trinity MEDICAL CENTER, and now it is Trinity HEALTH.