Gloria wrote:
"After reading all the posts, I spent quite a bit of my day looking at video
tapes of homebirths (I have a lot) to see just exactly what the women do
when they have
-gentle arrival for baby
-cord left to pulse until placenta comes (usually exactly 30 mins postbirth)
-no shot of Pitocin
-no separation from infant
-no wiping down or swaddling
-privacy, darkness
While watching, it seemed to me that feeding didn't really start until about
an hour after birth, in most cases. There's a lot of looking at each other
and baby being held in the crook of the left arm but not a lot of mouthing
of the breast or turning towards it until about an hour elapses. Lots of
kissing the head, checking the genitals to make sure if it's a boy/girl,
affection between parents. I don't know how I'd edit this stuff into a br
feeding film because they are all so different. One film was a LLL leader,
and she puts the baby on her breast and then says to her friend (another LLL
mom) "whoops, that's a bad latch, ha ha" Almost like her rational brain
kicked in to overcome instinct. It was fun to look back at some of these
births from the feeding angle. The birth is so dramatic that we usually
focus on filming that but now that my eyes are being opened about nuances of
feeding that I haven't noticed before, I'll be making video of more p.p.
time."
Gloria,
I think you are so right. I have been to many homebirths (as well as way too many hospital births) and had
all of my children at home as well. I have only seen a rush to get baby to breast at home when there was
concern about mom's pp bleeding--and even this would have only been after quite some time had passed.
It seems to me that the most important things I see moms doing involve connecting with their babies, especially
visually. Unless someone interrupts and tries to direct the mom (interventions!!), then she often seems to not
even notice others around her and just follows her own instincts. She can stay in this place so long as caretakers
realize how important it is.
I shot a homebirth last summer and showed some of the photos at a lecture I gave on infant
competence. Baby was born in water and mom had been very worried abut bf'ing, b/c she had struggled so
much with her first two. Even so, once the baby was in her arms (she caught him herself) and we were in that
birth energy where all the world stands still, she just fell into being with her baby. They reached out to each other,
responded to each other and found each other in their own perfect timing. He fed perfectly once they were ready.
In my opinion, one cannot demonstrate infant competence outside of a normal birth, b/c once you remove the
?mother and infant from normal birth, the infant is already compensating.
I think that the feeding within an hour after birth intervention is as absurd as any other intervention that seeks to
impose the norm on the dyad. If you have to artificially impose it, it is because you interfered with it in the first
place. I would rather we removed the interference and let normal behaviour be just that.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA
Intuitive Parenting Network LLC
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