The recent discussion of the nature of OB nurses has caught my interest.
 Although I don't subscribe to sweeping all of those who have chosen to work
in OB into a single category I do have concerns about the actions of
well-intentioned nurses taking and watching or holding babies for mothers
whom the nurses perceive as tired or needing their rest.  I do see that
sometimes a nurse feels that soon - especially with 24 or 48 hr. discharge -
 the mother will be home alone with the baby and therefore she needs all the
sleep she can get while in the hospital.

I don't like walking into a hospital room and seeing the television on and
the baby in a plastic bed by the mother, sometimes too far away from the
bedside for the mother to easily reach - all bundled up and alone.  I realize
that this is far better than being in separate rooms but a separation is
still being encouraged.

But another side of this picture is the mothers who don't seem to be
concerned that their babies are not in their arms.  Some of this could just
be lack of assertiveness. [ I know with my firstborn I felt not entirley in
charge while in the hospital, and didn't like the fact that our son was
removed from our presence to be weighed, scrubbed, etc. after nursing him in
the delivery room.  It made my husband and I more and more anxious until he
was out the door and down the hall on his way to reclaim our son - but it
took a while for us to build up our courage and indignation - and I'm pretty
assertive.]   Some mothers are too timid to ask for their babies or are led
to think the baby should be bundled up and alone by the actons of the nurses
who are not putting the babies in the mothers' arms.  Another point of
concern is that labor medications may be subduing the mothering instincts in
many of these mothers.  It was recently reported to me by word of mouth that
a study in progress or just into the analysis phase has seen an effect of
this sort on birthing mothers.

And the OB nurses are as bewildered as I am as to why babies who have
latched-on and within an hour after delivery are a day later just lying in
the mother's arms ignoring the breast and we all strongly feel that the
birthing medications are suspect. .  So the picture is very complex.  Even
so, I would like to see more babies kept in the mother's arms for a longer
part of the day and/or night right after the birth.  If you had told me six
months ago that so many baies would have so much trouble responding to the
breast in their first two days of life I wouldn't have believed it.

Mardrey Swenson
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