Diane and Morgan,
I agree with Diane's assessment. I wanted very much to like this video, and it is difficult to dislike something so strongly that has the potential to be so important, but it is so contrived and makes me very anxious to watch it. I hate the wiping of the baby--he is being so rudely handled--and it is even stated that this is to be done in every case!!! What is lost here is the competency of the relationship. The infant elicits and the mother responds. And back and forth it goes, competency expanding with every exchange.? Bonding is a duet!! 

I watched the video again and the mother is utterly irrelevant--just her breasts have any real function here. The whispering in baby's ear bit was totally contrived (not that it is done, but the way it is done)--would the mom really go about it like that? I think it made total sense that mom was pixilated, since the baby couldn't see her at all anyway--I assume that is the baby's view of his mother!! All of my babies self-attached and I was never lying flat on my back-cannot imagine how awkward that would have felt!! The claim is made on the video that if baby lifts his head, he can see mother's face, but he absolutely cannot! There is just no bonding going on here whatsoever. I do not know how they can claim it is a beautiful moment of joy for mother and child--I don't know if mom would have even noticed if not for all the clapping. While the baby is feeding, people are talking to mom, completely distracting her from the baby. If the video producers
believed in what they talk about, they would never have been so
invasive. As always--we go for the outcome and disregard the path to
getting there. Normal birth is the path to normal self-attachment--we cannot fix the damage that is done by medicalized birth by trying to contrive the attachment process. Yes, babies will self-attach--even weeks and months later. That is not the point--.we continue to make each part of the process about one or the other--the mother OR the baby--they are ONE--everything is about the unit. The baby experiences (and remembers!!) pregnancy and birth, the mother experiences the competency of the infant and on and on and it needs to be this way. 

Diane, another thing Michel Odent has always stressed--mothers need to be uninterrupted after the birth--no one should be in the room at all. He always talks about how he makes an excuse to drag the dad out of the room right after birth--b/c w/o interference moms and babies do the right thing! I am sorry, Morgan but I do not see this video as proof of competency (although I understand your point that folks do not even know this is possible), but I see it as one more? example of utter lack of respect for the natural process of birth and bonding. Interfere anywhere in the cascade and you have introduced risk. In this video, there is so much interference, it is almost embarrassing.



Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA
Intuitive Parenting Network LLC







 


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