Army chaplin criticises lack of mention of Christianity in President's Xmas speech

Hotblack Desiato

iguana wrote: »

is just the same as the murder of 6 million people.

Language is not always literal.
Is Larry David a traitor to the Jewish race for the 'soup nazi' joke in Seinfeld? Or the Hitler joke in Series 1, Ep 1, of Curb?

Hotblack Desiato

iguana wrote: »

Because health care professionals wanting mothers to feed their babies in a manner that does not increase the baby's risk of numerous diseases throughout it's life and ensures that the mother herself does not increase her risk of numerous life threatening illness in the next few decades of her life is just the same as the murder of 6 million people. I mean seriously that's actually sickening language to use and shows a lack of knowledge of a huge part of the job of the nurses/midwives which is to ensure their patients have the diet most suited to their biological needs. Would you call the nurses on the renal ward kidney nazis for pushing their patients to follow a low protein diet?

I'm sorry it didn't work out for your wife and that she was ill after your child's birth but calling health care workers reprehensible names for doing their jobs, part of which is to look out for the medically proven best interests of your child's future, isn't cool.:( And bear in mind that if those 'nazis' were successful in their aims, when the 2% of women who can't breastfeed have babies there would be ample donor milk available for their children, reducing the risk to their children's health too.

Didn't work out? she had a severe bleed, but when the shift changed the night nurse still thought she should get up and breast feed, stand up, pick up baby in line with all the usual optimistic protocols, she collapsed while holding our baby and it was sheer luck our child escaped a serious head injury.

It wouldn't have happened were it not for boob nazis.

looksee

Not sure how we got from Army chaplains to breast feeding, but I agree that over-enthusiastic proponents of breast feeding can sometimes cause more harm than good.

With my first I was the only mother breast feeding in the maternity home (40 odd years ago) and I was feeding my own, and prem twins by donation, no problem. With the last one I had milk but it would not come down and after 4 days I had to ask for the baby to be weighed before and after feeding attempts to prove what I knew, that she was not getting any milk. Asking for a bottle for her was like banging my head off a wall. Eventually I proved it and finally she was fed.

seamus

Funny thing about alleged "boob nazis" was that my wife had exactly the opposite experience in hospital. All the way through the pregnancy, breastfeeding was heavily pushed, "We're not even allowed to talk to you about bottlefeeding", etc. My wife was determined to breastfeed anyway.

Then she gave birth and the whole tone changed. One or two midwives did their best to find five minutes to try and help her breastfeed, but the rest just wanted a quiet life. Barely six hours after giving birth, one midwife said, "If you can't do it you're going to have to give her a bottle" and walked off without even trying to help. When my daughter (and wife ) cried all night because they were having difficulty sorting it out, another midwife berated her for keeping everyone else awake and again told her to just go get a bottle.

She succeeded in the end, but it was the change in attitude that got to her. Until the baby was born it was all about the boob, but then once the midwives got the faintest sniff that could claim that they were advising bottlefeeding on medical grounds, that's all they would talk about. No advice & no support for anyone trying to breastfeed.

Shrap

All I'll tell you is that the hospital sounds like the worst place to learn how to breastfeed, but it's the better option if there's any nurses/midwives about with time to teach you. I learned at home, in the company of the public health nurse and my Mammy but by jebus it is difficult. I mean, really hard sometimes (before someone says it was the easiest thing they ever did). If you don't get the hang of breastfeeding in the hospital (the only time most women get shown), the next few days is not a good time to figure it out.

Hormones kick in a few days after birth, so now not only do you feel like you're the most unattractive empty bag on the planet, you also feel like someone beat the head off your happiness as well. Dressing baby, holding baby, changing baby....all designed to make you feel like the time someone told you age 6 that you were doing it wrong, as you dangled the tiny tears by a leg. Breasts are hard as rocks from too much milk and directing nipple to mouth is like trying to direct a balloon to dock on a bottle top using only your knees. Baby wailing with a sound that makes you oh-so very aware that you're the only one who can fix it, ever, for like the next 20 years or so.

Failure is not an option.....................except it is now. There are bottles and that's fecking brilliant. But I personally believe that many more women attempting to breastfeed would give up in a heartbeat if breastfeeding coaches (ok, boob nazis is a good word for them!) weren't super-tough and no nonsense about it. Really. I had to be bullied into trying again and again, through floods of tears and wanting to kick other mammies/nurses who smugly tell you how great it is when you know how.

They don't tell you all that in the same breath as how it's "best for baby" when you're pregnant!

iguana

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

f*kin wow all the same.

Didn't work out? she had a severe bleed, but when the shift changed the night nurse still thought she should get up and breast feed, stand up, pick up baby in line with all the usual optimistic protocols, she collapsed while holding our baby and it was sheer luck our child escaped a serious head injury.

It wouldn't have happened were it not for boob nazis.

Um no, that had nothing to do with breastfeeding proponency and everything to do with a bully who wouldn't listen to her patient and wasn't monitoring her health properly. Someone who obviously knew jack about breastfeeding because there was no reason whatsoever for your wife to get in anyway upright in order to feed your child. I'd say I was shocked that your wife was treated like that, however the stories I've heard from Ireland's maternity wards suggest that there exists an over-riding culture of women not being listened to and pressured into doing things they aren't comfortable with by health care professionals who often aren't even up to date on best practice. To be totally honest I've heard more stories of mothers who are breastfeeding being undermined and having formula top-ups pushed on them due to unwarranted concerns about weight. I hope your wife made an official complaint about that treatment but I know that at the point when you've just had a baby your instincts are rarely to 'fight'. But now hopefully having had the time to heal medically and physically from such appalling treatment it might be worth your wife considering that she was bullied by someone on a fuçking powertrip, who would likely have treated her equally as ****tily if she had been refusing formula, and not someone who was genuinely trying to look after both their best interests which was what genuine breastfeeding advocacy is. To be honest, and to introduce a fairly common topic of discussion on this forum, I strongly believe that part of the reason why women are so often treated like incompetents in Irish maternity hospitals is in large part due to culture created by the nuns who ran those wards for so long.

A proper breastfeeding advocate would have taken care of your wife's needs and helped her to feed your child while lying down. If your wife's blood pressure was low after the bleed, she should have been encouraged to lie down with her extremities raised as often as possible and it's possible to do that while breastfeeding. I have chronically low blood pressure and the ability to feed my son while almost completely prone is the only way I could possibly have lived alone with him when I needed to when he was younger. I had a c-section after 80 hours of labour, my low blood pressure caused my heart to slow to a stop once the spinal block was administered ahead of the surgery. The doctors were prepared for that and administered adrenalin which saved my life but caused massive blood loss during surgery. It took a long time to stop the bleeding and sew me back up after my son was born and I needed a platelet transfusion. After the adrenalin left my system I was violently ill (a most unpleasant experience when you are entirely paralysed from the neck down) and for 10 hours couldn't even take a sip of water without vomitting, because a problem with my IV was putting my kidneys under pressure. I had no movement in my arms for 4 hours after surgery and after that my movements are slow and extremely limited. But I had proper support to feed my son (I was not in Ireland) who was placed on my chest immediately once I stopped throwing up. Because I didn't complete labour it took 5 days of near constant suckling for my milk to come in and my son lost 9.5% of his fairly massive 4.5kg birthweight. I can't tell you how much of a problem that would have been in an Irish maternity hospital. I have friends who's babies lost a lot less weight who were bullied, not allowed go home and even threatened with social services intervention if they refused formula top-ups despite their baby's weight loss being well within the internationally accepted norms. The stark contrast between my treatment in Wales and the way my friends talk about their treatment here frankly scares the shít out of me when I think about having another child. And that's not something that will change when people attribute the disgusting way so many women are treated to an easy scapegoat like 'boob nazism' which causes division between mothers and prevents a real examination of how mothers, using all feeding methods, are treated.

Shrap

iguana wrote: »

And that's not something that will change when people attribute the disgusting way so many women are treated to an easy scapegoat like 'boob nazism' which causes division between mothers and prevents a real examination of how mothers, using all feeding methods, are treated.

I see your point, and agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts on the Irish health system (Just as well you weren't here -wow, you had a hard time of it :eek: ) but considering we call people who correct grammar "grammar nazis", I'm seeing it as just a term. Granted, it doesn't help the misinformation about breastfeeding and it's proponents, but it is one woman's description of the bullying she encountered. The entire maternity system needs transforming, and until that happens, women will continue to be treated like brood mares. The breastfeeding experience in hospital is often the last straw for many women I would imagine, so can't really blame the turn of phrase for holding back those women who'd go for it with the proper support and education about it.

iguana

Shrap wrote: »

I see your point, and agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts on the Irish health system (Just as well you weren't here -wow, you had a hard time of it :eek: ) but considering we call people who correct grammar "grammar nazis", I'm seeing it as just a term. Granted, it doesn't help the misinformation about breastfeeding and it's proponents, but it is one woman's description of the bullying she encountered. The entire maternity system needs transforming, and until that happens, women will continue to be treated like brood mares. The breastfeeding experience in hospital is often the last straw for many women I would imagine, so can't really blame the turn of phrase for holding back those women who'd go for it with the proper support and education about it.

I guess that having European Jews in my family who's elderly relatives were in concentration camps, it's a turn of phrase that I have come to object very strongly to, (unless it's being used to draw comparison to other murderous regimes). But it does make sense that someone who was treated so disgustingly at such a vulnerable period of their life would use such strong language to describe that experience and their feelings about it.

With regards to my son's birth what may be strange about it is that I have nothing but positive associations when I think about it. The midwifes and doctors were all great. They talked me through everything they did and let me make every decision that I could make. It's a strange experience to have the people around you conversationally describe the weird things you feel going on in your body and tell you that means your heart is slowing and that the sudden racing sensation was the adrenalin kickstarting it again. The following day when the doctor running the labour ward came around to chat with me about how things had gone, how I felt mentally as well as physically and if I would like them to arrange a counselor to come and talk me through how I was feeling I was honestly bemused as I experienced no mental trauma at all and I attribute that 100% to being treated like a competent person who mattered by the the people treating me.

Shrap

iguana wrote: »

I guess that having European Jews in my family who's elderly relatives were in concentration camps, it's a turn of phrase that I have come to object very strongly to, (unless it's being used to draw comparison to other murderous regimes). But it does make sense that someone who was treated so disgustingly at such a vulnerable period of their life would use such strong language to describe that experience and their feelings about it.

Totally fair enough. I wouldn't use the phrase "grammar nazis" around my OH, who is also Jewish and who's entire generation of grandparents were murdered in the camps.

Hotblack Desiato

iguana wrote: »

Um no, that had nothing to do with breastfeeding proponency and everything to do with a bully who wouldn't listen to her patient and wasn't monitoring her health properly.

Also seemingly not being briefed at all by the previous shift (the epidural hadn't worn off, my wife had been warned by the anaesthetist not to try to get out of bed for a certain number of hours, plus the blood loss) and probable overwork - although it only takes a few seconds to pick up a baby for a mother; this wasn't offered and my wife, who had only just woken up, instinctively tried to comply with the orders barked at her.

Sorry if my wife's terminology caused any offence (see, an apology of sorts while also sidestepping responsbility. Maybe I should move into politics )