Hi Rachael,
Even scarier are orphanages which may contain hundreds of children and be 
very, very quiet.
I really love the book What Mothers Do.  The point about mothers being 
instantly interruptable  is one that I have not seen described elsewhere but 
which resonates with my personal experience.....it's why it takes me 
*forever* to write anything!
Karleen Gribble
Australia



> Personally I am getting less and less tolerant of environments, such as 
> hospital maternity wards, mine in particular, in which children's cries 
> and even their screams are considered part of the normal background noise, 
> rather than an emergency siren to which we should respond immediately. 
> I'm not sure what part of my brain gets activated, all I know is I feel 
> all tied in knots when I hear a newborn cry for more than a minute without 
> being comforted, and if it continues I can not keep working, I have to go 
> investigate and comfort the baby if there is no parent available to do so. 
> I try to collect myself so when the mother does appear (from the toilet, 
> or shower, or wherever she was when the baby started to cry) I can tell 
> her 'somebody missed you desperately' rather than snapping 'What on earth 
> kept you so long?! Some people don't deserve to have children!' because 
> even I can appreciate that mothers need to eat, and pee, and wash, and we 
> don't provide an extended family to help her while she is our guest.
>
> Even an exhausted mother is able to take it as a compliment that her 
> one-day old child already prefers her arms to a plastic box on wheels, if 
> someone is on hand to point it out.  If you work in a hospital, you know 
> that there is never enough time allotted for the most important thing we 
> do, which is nurture the mother so she can nurture her baby, and you are 
> probably as frustrated as I am about it too.
>
> The book 'What Mothers Do - especially when it looks like nothing' is well 
> worth a read, for those who haven't taken the time to do so before.  Naomi 
> Stadlen is the author.
 

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