Not sure how this post will turn out…I’m just going to go with my thoughts… 

When I was first pregnant with Flopsy, I dutifully went to see my GP (as I was told to do by magazines and books) who said “congratulations - make an appointment to see the midwife”.  When I got pregnant with Mopsy I did the same - good little girl that I am!  Both times I came away wondering what the point had been.  The GP hadn’t done a test, he’d just taken my word for it.  Even if he had done a test, the home test kits are just as accurate as the ones they have at the surgery so it would have been a bit of a waste of money.  So when I got pregnant with Cotton-tail I rang the surgery and asked for an appointment with the midwife.  “Have you seen the Dr yet?” the nosy receptionist asked (not sure why I needed to write ‘nosy’ there - aren’t all drs receptionists nosy?).  “No” I replied “Why?”.  “Well you need to see the Dr to confirm that you are pregnant.”  I refused and said “This is my third pregnancy - I can assure I am certainly pregnant.  Isn’t it a bit of a waste of valuable surgery time for me to come in and be told something I know already?  There’s no necessity for me to see the Dr at all - please make me an appointment with the midwife”.  She saw sense, thank goodness, and made me one.  But my story is not unusual.  From the minute we conceive we are told by convention that we are not capable.  We cannot even be trusted to know that we are pregnant without an all-seeing, all-knowing  a fully trained Dr telling us that we are!  This then leads onto us being told, implicitly, that we can’t be trusted to carry a baby to term.  We need to have millions of tests to check we’re doing it well enough and if we’re not, well that’s ok - the state will step in and sort it all out for us.  Before I go on, let me just make it clear that I am not bemoaning the provision of good antenatal care here.  This post is about the fact that we are as close to being forced to conform as is humanly possible in a ‘democracy’ such as we live in.  If we refuse tests we are frowned at and told that we’re irresponsible.  We are punished repeatedly for this act of revolt by having it stamped across our notes for every health care professional (HCP) we come across to see and tell us off about.  Having said that, I’ve been lucky enough to have mostly midwives and drs who believe in informed choice and in respecting informed choice even if it’s not what they’d choose.  But I have been lucky - a lot of women are being ‘cared for’ by HCPs who are paternalistic - ‘they’ve done the training so they know best and anyone who thinks they know better are irresponsible’.  So this all subconciously tells us we can’t manage without help - we are disempowered!  How many women go to every single antenatal appointment they are given, have every single scan and every single blood test when they’re expecting their first baby?

Then the birth happens.  We’re told it’s dangerous to birth our babies at home for various reasons.  We are told that we won’t possibly be able to do it without help from midwives and drs. and all the wonderful equipment available in hospital.  Never mind the fact that we have been able to birth our babies without it all since time began!  That’s a huge subject to dissect, but the point is, we are still being disempowered - women truly don’t believe they have the power to birth a baby safely without help.

Then after our babies are born, our mothering skills are tested and checked up on by health visitors.  Our ability to feed them is checked up on - not by asking us how we feel our babies are doing, but by weighing them!  There is even a chart that health visitors refer to that tells them how well we’re doing as mothers.  It has so much attention paid to it, that chart, despite the fact that there is so much research saying how badly it’s utilised and how there is far too much focus put on it.  But still, it’s a good way for them to keep tabs on us incompetent mothers.  I’ve heard mothers say ‘I kind of know he’s doing well - he’s happy, developing, filling out his clothes - but I like to go and get him weighed so I know for certain that he’s ok’.  We don’t trust the evidence before our eyes and can’t believe we’re doing an ok job as a mother unless a HCP tells us so.

At some point in history, children started going to school.  As more and more children did it, more and more people started to believe that all children should go to school.  Then people started believing that children wouldn’t learn if they didn’t go to school.  When I was a little girl, children went when they were five and were taught by teachers who could do pretty much what they wanted.  Then they brought in the national curriculum and teachers were being implicitly told that they weren’t capable of teaching without interference from the powers that be.  Well if that’s the case, then certainly parents can’t possibly be capable of ensuring their children are educated!  Then they brought in ‘reception year’ for 4 year olds.  Not compulsory at all, but of course more and more children started to go and now it is nearly unheard-of for children to wait to attend school until they’re 5.  Because of course parents can’t possibly be trusted to educate their children once they get to 4 years old, can they?  Actually, they can’t really be trusted to do that even once their children reach 3 years old, hence the free nursery places for three year old children, and the national curriculum for babies and toddlers.  Parents themselves now don’t believe they’re capable of caring for their children once they hit 3 years old.  The disempowerment is creeping into every facet of our parenting lives and it’s been getting worse and worse.  I once read a post on a parenting forum from a mum of a 2-year-old who had been working but now was facing the prospect of being a stay-at-home-mum unable to afford nursery fees - she was very concerned that she wouldn’t be able to teach him what he needed to know and was asking for ideas as to how to teach him his numbers etc.  This was not an unusual post!  Parents really don’t trust themselves any more and that’s because the government doesn’t trust them. 

This is quite a rambling post - sorry about that!  Anyway, what I’m about to ramble onto now is my feelings about breastfeeding and empowerment.  I believe that women’s belief in their ability to mother their babies can be damaged even further if they don’t succeed at breastfeeding.  The reason I believe this is because of how I have noticed that when women who have not managed to birth their babies without help have found successful breastfeeding incredibly healing and they talk about their immense pride that they’re babies have grown and thrived because of their milk.  This is not to say that mothers who don’t breastfeed don’t have the same ability to mother!  What I wonder is if they have a less robust subconcious belief in their ability to mother.  Whether they are more disempowered…?  I would love to see a study into this, although how it would be done I have no idea!  I am not as interested as you might imagine in getting babies breastfed.  I am trained to be mother-centred and to focus on empowering mothers because how e nurture our babies is the main focus of the beginning of our parenting careers and if we feel empowered at the beginning, perhaps we continue to feel empowered and capable and more trusting of our instincts and innate ability to mother.  So another reason for supporting breastfeeding supporters (not breastfeeding promoters - breastfeeding promotion is disempowering). 

Of course, I don’t think breastfeeding isn’t the be-all-and-end-all, but it is often the starting point.  The endless testing and direction and taking-over of parenting by the state, in my opinion, filters down to our children.  By sending them to school, we (and their teachers) imply that they are not capable of learning without someone teaching them.  By making them eat what and when we say so (or rather when the books/health visitors/whatever say so), we imply that they are not capable of regulating their own food intake.  By forcing them to sleep at set times of the day (because that is what we are told we ought to do), we imply that they are not capable of going to sleep when they’re tired.  I could go on.  The fact is that everyone in the world has different experiences that everyone else.  Everyone has different knowledge.  We ought to be sharing that knowledge and experience but not telling other people what to do based on it or we rob them of the chance of gaining their own knowledge and experience - we disempower them and they go on to disempower others.

Again, apologies for the rambling nature of this post - these thoughts have been roaming my head for weeks now, waiting for an opportunity to be blogged about.  And of course my children won’t do as their told and sit quietly while I concentrate   There’s loads more to say/write about this subject