wrote:

I think the point is that it is difficult to distinguish between the
two and medical intervention doesn't always end up with a healthier
'undamaged' mum and baby, the decisions made during labour often
aren't clear-cut. The "mother's feelings/emotions/happiness etc"
inseperable from the desired result of "a healthy and
undamaged mother and baby". There are physiological / hormonal factors
that affect the birth process (and therefore the end result of health
mother and baby) as well as ability to successfully feed, bond etc.
For example, travelling to hospital and going through the admission
process does sometimes cause labour to slow or even stop, maybe due to
stress - not sure but it's a fact, so labour stopping / slowing could
lead to induction which could lead to epidural / forceps / ventouse /

Had exactly this chain of events with first born... 40 hours of
(intermittent) labour later, induction, and various other interventions,
we ended up with an emergency c section. Fortunately sprog was gruntled
throughout, but mum looked like she had just done a couple of rounds
with Mike Tyson. No way of knowing if the final outcome would have been
different at home, but I am sure the leadup would have been far less
distressing for all.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/