_The Scientification of Love_ and _The Farmer and the Obstetrician_ by Michel Odent

[walkitout]

I bought these when I was pregnant with T., but as near as I can tell, never got around to reading them. They are book-length essays that overlap substantially with each other, and with some of Odent's other books (_Primal Health_, _Birth and Breastfeeding_, for example, which I did read when pregnant with T.).

Odent provides enough bibliographic information so if one of his little tidbits piques your interest, you can pursue the details. But you'll have to pursue the details, because Odent is not the kind of guy to distinguish between sources based on quality of research (if any). Whether due to translational issues, me just having Issues, or actual slopping thinking/writing, I could find a lot to quarrel with in the information presented by Odent (both what he chooses to mention and the connections he draws).

That said, these are interesting, quick not-quite stream-of-consciousness essays that draw connections across a wide array of thinkers/researchers. _Farmer_ explicitly compares industrialized agriculture to industrialized childbirth, listing parallel thinkers/movers/shakers on each side (which is kinda cool with Ina May at the Farm, actually, but he doesn't develop that particular nexus as much as I would have). His thesis seems to be that we have to change the way birth happens to change the way humans develop to change the way we interact with the planet to keep from driving ourselves Right Off a Cliff. For such an ambitious program, he has a relatively reasonable timeline (thirty years).

_Scientification_ is more problematic, which may reflect either that it was written a little earlier, or was revised, or who knows. This one assembles in one place everything Odent (well, it seems that way) could find that comes more or less under the heading attempts by "science" to understand "love". I put these in quotes because the science is often Really Really Bad and the definition of Love is so diffuse that it kinda makes you wonder what limits, if any, could be placed on it.

Odent has done great things for birth culture. He continues to be an effective force in opposition to medicalized, non-physiological childbirth. But I just cannot help but feel that he oversells the importance of the hours in labor/immediately after birth. At times, he is clear on the influence of the pregnancy-as-a-whole. I dimly recall that in _Primal_ and _B&B_ he recognized the importance of the first year. And I'm not saying these things aren't important -- I just persist in believing that while it may, eventually, be too late to make a difference, that time is a whole lot later than most commentators seem to believe (altho it's worth noting that it might get considerably more difficult and take a large proportion of one's remaining life to make meaningful changes later in life).

YMMV. I think you can still get these on Amazon, but they aren't the easiest books to lay hands on at a library or bookstore; I wouldn't go out of my way, if I were you.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

When did he write those? I had a lot more respect for Michel Odent before he got into pushing lemon detox diets and the like. I think he went all fake guru at some point. Maybe he always was, dunno -- it's so many years since I read anything by him -- but I did think he had some valid stuff to say at one time.

I'm told that one of his books says that eating sardines has the same physiological effect as being happy, which totally cracks me up. I have not bothered to check if it's really true (that he says so, I mean: I don't know of any way to check the truth of the statement as given).

copyright dates are 2001 and 2002

[walkitout]

So we can assume he wrote them before those dates, and probably guess not very long before those dates. The 2001 is the revised edition.

I didn't know he was in on the lemon detox stuff. My mother-in-law went for one of those. The maple syrup variant has introduced a _lot_ of competition for grade B maple syrup that I find frustrating because I'd far rather have it readily available for my waffles. ;-)

ETA: Yup -- same one my mother-in-law went for. Odent advocates it for preconception adipose renewal, whatever the heck that means.

http://www.lemondetox.com/practitioners.htm

As for sardines? Really? They are a good source of omega-3s, IIRC. But sardines = teh happy? Wacky.

ETA: Here is Odent on sardines as part of (pre)eclampsia prevention:

http://www.wombecology.com/preeclampsia.html

As for the happy thing, I _think_ that's more of the omega-3 argument. His idea is that you need the right lipids to support brain development, especially late in pregnancy. You can improve lipid support in several ways. Eat more of the right kind (sardines), reduce your cortisol production (be happy) since cortisol contributes to rapid destruction of long-chain fatty acids. Along the same lines, he advocates singing for pregnant women, because of the beneficial hormonal balance that tends to be associated with singing.

A summary of these ideas can be found here, along with a citation to a more fully developed version:

http://www.midwiferytoday.com/enews/enews0411.asp

Thanks for telling me about this stuff! This is hilarious. I mean, there's a veneer of plausibility (and hell, maybe it'll All Turn Out to Be Accurate), but the backing evidence is weak, to say the least.

On the theory that it is good for pregnant women to laugh

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

and to continue the sardine-related theme, I offer this:

"Lear’s letters, too, are hilarious—if there’s affectation in Lear, it’s affectation of the most humane sort. While staying in Venice, he reads in the Times that a friend in England has obtained a high government position:

I threw the paper up into the air and jumped aloft myself—ending by taking a small fried whiting out of the plate before me and waving it round my foolish head triumphantly till the tail came off and the body and head flew bounce over to the other side of the table d’hôte room. Then only did I perceive that I was not alone, but that a party was at breakfast in a recess. Happily for me they were not English, and when I made an apology saying I had suddenly seen some good news of a friend of mine, these amiable Italians said—“Bravissimo, signore! We rejoice with you! And if only we had some little fish we would throw them about the room too, in sympathy with you!”

Re: On the theory that it is good for pregnant women to laugh

[walkitout]

Amiable, for sure! It's tough to imagine getting that sympathetic/empathetic/positive/supportive a reaction anywhere if you threw a fish across the room after twirling it around one's head.

breastfeeding in Iceland

[walkitout]

I'm going to downgrade my review of _Scientification of Love_ from "don't go out of your way" to "avoid if at all possible". I've stumbled across an egregious error that really deserves some flogging.

On page 113, in Babyist Interlude 1, Odent summarizes a chapter from _Anthropology of Breast-feeding_ as follows:

Iceland reduced duration of breastfeeding and substituted for human milk to the furthest extreme. By the end of the 19th C., Icelandic babies had not been breastfed at all for about two centures but instead were fed chewed fish, "a dietary item which helped to introduce fatty acids that are essential for brain development...Iceland is probably the only country in the world which could maintain its population over a period of several centuries without babies being given any human milk at all. This process of survival of the fittest has been so harsh and pitiless than (sic) now the Icelandics are among the healthiest people on the planet."

Several problems. First, I fucking _hate_ when people use several to include three. Yes, I _know_ the dictionaries agree. But come on. Picky. Sorry. Second, way to go Odent: take a population in which 2-3 kids survived out of every 12-15 born and focus on the fatty acids in the fish. Not. That is just _creepy_ and makes me really wonder _a lot_ about whether I should ever trust this man on anything ever again. Third: _did not_ maintain their population; it was declining the whole time. Now, a lot of things contributed to this (spectacularly low marriage rates, relatively late marriage, lots of still births, lots of dead babies because breastfeeding stopped at a week or so of age). Finally, _some_ babies were breastfed: very poor families who had not enough cows to feed the babies milk/cream/etc. (because contrary to Odent's description, they weren't primarily fed fish; they were mostly fed cow's milk with expectable results) did breastfeed. And their babies survived at significantly disproportionate rates.

I've ordered a copy of the source and read the relevant chapter (except page 100, inexplicably missing) on google books. Odent just got major chunks wrong. This is Bad. This is a man whose judgment has been compromised by fish. Think it's the mercury poisoning?