I spoke with my colleague Barb Berhmann the other day. She is the author of The Breastfeeding Cafe: Mothers Share the Joys, Challenges and Secrets of Nursing, a beautiful example of what happens when you blend the best of intellectual analysis with women’s experience. Her book is rich with stories and commentary on breastfeeding in the United States. An eloquent statement to the realities of the times in which women undertake the feeding of their infants, through their bodies, in a culture where this is not the standard practice.

Do we care about mothers and babies in our culture? As of September 2006, there were only 55 hospitals and birth centers designated as 'baby friendly'. What does that make all the other places where babies are born? Here is all they have to do to become baby friendly (Mother Friendly is another story):

The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative promotes, protects, and supports breastfeeding through The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding for Hospitals, as outlined by UNICEF/WHO. The steps for the United States are:
1 - Maintain a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health care staff.
2 - Train all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.
3 - Inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding.
4 - Help mothers initiate breastfeeding within one hour of birth.
5 - Show mothers how to breastfeed and how to maintain lactation, even if they are separated from their infants.
6 - Give infants no food or drink other than breastmilk, unless medically indicated.
7 - Practice “rooming in”-- allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day.
8 - Encourage unrestricted breastfeeding.
9 - Give no pacifiers or artificial nipples to breastfeeding infants.
10 -Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic

Ironically, just as the Ad Council public health campaigns, and politicians like Dennis Hastert spout off about putting warning labels on formula and exhort us to breastfeed our babies, women are still getting kicked off airplanes in Vermont for doing just that. What, breastfeed your baby but not in public? Stay home? Stay covered up? What is this, some far off fundamentalist world where women should do that reproductive business cloistered in the home? Ironically, the rest of the world is gawping at Britney’s slimmed abs and viewing Anna Nicole’s cesarean. What does it all mean?

Well, I know of a few sociologists and anthropologists who are examining these phenomena, and I’ll be highlighting their work and contributions in my next few posts. As Reproductive Issues play out in our personal, regional, national and international lives, I’ll be there to tell some of the stories I hear, from the intellectuals and the women I encounter.