I work in a hospital where self-latching is meant to be the norm.  After
birth, baby stays skin to skin on mother's body, and while some women still
have clothes on by then, most are wearing next to nothing.  We don't have
anything resembling gowns for patients.  What we have are big loose
shapeless soft cotton shirts that button down the front, and knickers made
of netting whose sole purpose is to hold a sanitary pad in place.  Sometimes
we snip away the crotch of one of those and use it as a tube top to hold a
flannel cloth there if mother is leaking copious amounts of milk.  I don't
know what the pediatric ward uses, but every adult in our hospital is
offered the same shirt.  I am fortunate enough not to know what kind of
underpants patients on other wards use, or even whether they are supplied
with same by the hospital.  
A lot of postpartum mothers wear comfy clothes of their own, and take off
nearly everything when they are in their own rooms.  They take their meals
in a dining room, and they change their babies in a room for that purpose,
so wandering about in a thigh-length cotton shirt and netting knickers
exposes them more than most of them like.  At the very least they will have
on a bathrobe, but most will actually wear clothes.
I never have any trouble finding exposed skin when helping a mother get
situated for a feed - one of the benefits of living in a country where a
naked human body is not taboo, and where everyone knows what breasts are
for.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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