All these posts about how parents are more tuned in to their cell phones than to their newborns makes you long for the good old days when we told people their phones could disturb the all-important electronic equipment in the hospital and they had to turn them off. It was probably just nonsense even then but I miss it.

A couple of weeks ago I had two mothers on my ward at the same time who DID NOT GO ON LINE during their 48 hour stays in hospital, nor answer calls from anyone except their partner or the baby's siblings. I put a star on my calendar for it, can't remember last time I experienced that. We can always hope it's the start of a trend :-)


There are more smart phones in this country than there are people, and I wish I were exaggerating but I am not. I think there may be some researchers working on how to implant them in utero. 
And one of my colleagues has observed that when babies are left on mother's chest after birth and parents are invited to watch what happens, the cell phones don't appear - but if we fall back into the usual Norwegian pattern of leaving baby undisturbed on mother's chest just until placenta is delivered and suturing done, if needed, only for mother and baby to be abruptly turned onto their sides, facing each other, and hooked together by an effective and authoritative staff person just as the baby is starting to really try to get attached at the breast, then the mother will be reading everyone's FB updates before the baby has swallowed any colostrum. It is alienating to such a degree that the mother and baby become alien to one another. Yuck.

Rachel Myr
working on a specific protocol for how to enable the first feed, to avoid such alienation in Kristiansand, Norway

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