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n/a on 2/24/2008 2:18:07 AM |
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RE: The Business of Being Born |
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One more comment that I would love to hear other's opinions on.
In the movie, Michael Odent suggests that a highly medicalized or negative birth may disrupt "love hormones" and interfere in mother-baby bonding. I disagree. A mother’s birth experience does not change the love that a mother feels for her child. In fact, the feeling is only intensified after a negative birth experience as she battles her suspicions that she may not be up for the awesome responsibility of motherhood. No matter how people around her may try to encourage her, she harbors secret self doubt. If she feels that her body has failed her during her first task as a mother, she may feel that perhaps, someone or something else is better at other parenting tasks as well. For example, she may doubt her ability to breastfeed. She may doubt her ability to parent compared to another caregiver. She cannot admit this out loud; however, so she is caught. On one hand, she knows instinctively that she is her child’s only mother. On the other hand, she feels that her child deserves better. Only there is no one better. So she becomes increasingly desperate to find a way out of this. No matter how she talks to other people, they only say that she is of course adequate. Only she knows better. She knows that she could be better, that she should feel differently. So she grieves. The birth experience didn’t change her bonding, it just made her doubt her ability as a mother.
Comments?
Tienchin Ho |
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