Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Monday, May 21, 2007

Doing What Comes Naturally

What is all the fuss about? Nature has designed its creatures to engage in certain circumscribed activities for the purpose of furthering their existence, for ensuring their future as viable creatures. Raising young is one of them, necessitating that representatives of either gender engage in physical union, activities certain to result in offspring. And when babies are born their mothers nurse them until such time as they are capable of consuming solid comestibles.

Birds do it, bees do it. As far as we know, elephants, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and butterflies do it; and even dinosaurs did it. Our primitive ancestors away back in primeval times did it. How else might we have come into existence as the powerful race that we are, masters of all we survey? So, this is a natural process, one that ensures the continuation of the species. We are hard-wired to reproduce, and take pleasure in the process, to boot.

Mind, once the act has succeeded in producing offspring, other and more deliberate responsibilities and values and actions kick in. The resulting child must be nurtured, its needs supplied, its emotions salved, its existence assured. The mother of the child, equipped by nature and her own responding hormones must begin the act of feeding the child appropriate to its needs and capabilities.

For the first few months of a baby's existence it should be nursed by its mother upon whom nature has bestowed potentially copious amounts of mother's milk post-partum. What the hell is the big deal? Just do it. For its part, the baby is naturally inclined toward that bulbous offering spouting liquid manna. Why on earth do new mothers complain this is such a difficult task, such a societally unreasonable expectation of them?

Why do young women weep at the unfairness of it all? They want to become mother to a child, but appear unwilling to nurture the child as nature intended it to be done. They claim that they are not adequately prepared by society to take on this infuriatingly burdensome and irksome task. Give the baby a bottle. That act in and of itself conspires to feed the child while depriving it of the most elemental human need; that of the physical adherence of mother to child.

There isn't enough information, not enough support, practical or emotional, they wail, weeping piteously for their misunderstood and unappreciated sacrifices. This is pretty frustrating to the casual observer, one who understands the natural process of existence, of responsibility and love of a mother for her child. What is so difficult about it? Why place obstacles in the way of achieving the kind of unity and harmony and nurturance the child needs?

I watched my mother offer her life-giving resources to her three children, those that followed my own birth. My mother gave me no direct information or advice. When I gave birth to my first child there was no information forthcoming from the obstetrician, from the nurses, from any source, including the larger circle of my relatives. I knew, dimly, I would be required to take in sufficient liquid to produce sufficient mother's milk. Then I did it. Three times.

No big deal. You do it. It's natural. Why have a child if you're not prepared to offer it the means whereby it can face life in a good head-start?

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