(answering two posts in one go...)


On Friday, May 3, 2013, Nikki Lee wrote:

> Dear Lactnet Friends:
>
> When I worked in labor and delivery, I heard mothers rejecting their
> newborns saying things like, "eeuw, take it away",  and  "gross" .
>
>  How would the human race have survived if new mothers rejected their
> young?

'Rejecting' seems to me to be a harsh word to describe a momentary response at a time of stress. 


> Is a mother rejecting her baby when she isn't ready to give birth (when
> labor is induced) a sign of her lack of readiness?

Do we have any evidence that rejection or bonding problems are more likely to occur after induced labour? (See my comments to Melissa below.) And, if so, do we have any evidence that this is due to physiological unreadiness rather than to what may well be a more difficult labour?

 > Is  rejection of the newborn a consequence of technologically
> driven birth? 

I don't think it can be that simple. After all, young girls with concealed pregnancies who have unassisted childbirths are at particularly high risk of abandoning their infants. I suspect that stress around birth - in particular, feeling out of control and unsupported - is a huge factor, as is feeling unprepared for childbirth generally. 


> How can a mother feel safe to open and receive her baby when she is
> surrounded by strangers and machines?

I think this is very much an individual thing. Some mothers feel more distressed as a result of this, whereas others actually feel more reassured, so I'm wary of generalities. 

I do think it's worth working towards team care/one-to-one support for all mothers who want this in their labour, although there are going to be some practical limits to the extent to which we can safely do this and still have enough trained personnel present. For many women, having low-tech births is going to be a less stressful experience, and we should work towards this where safe to do so, but it isn't a one-size-fits-all answer for everybody.

> Labor is disrupted in all other
> species when it occurs in zoos....

I'm not sure how good an analogy that is, because wild animals instinctively see people as a threat. Being in a human environment with humans around is going to be much more threatening for animals than it would be for humans. The equivalent for a human mother would be giving birth surrounded by wild animals. ;-)



Melissa Senf wrote in reply:

> Dr Michel
>Odent came to my area to talk a few weeks ago. His talk was about the 'love
>cocktail' that happend after birth and that a women's ability to fall in
>love will never be higher than the hour after birth.  He has a lot of
>studies that are saying that induction of labor is counter to that, and is
>very detrimental to bonding.

I was curious on reading this so looked it up (googling & also using the 'look inside' feature for his most recent books on Amazon), and all I could find was him saying that we *don't* have much in the way of studies to show the effects of induction. Of course, it's possible that a stack were published in the past few years, but I couldn't find any on Pubmed. I have to say I'm a bit dubious, therefore, about the claim that there are a lot of studies showing this. Have you any citations?


Best wishes,

Sarah

>

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