Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (109 page)

Reclaiming Birth Power Collectively

Imagine what might happen if the majority of women emerged from their labor beds with a renewed sense of the strength and power of their bodies, and of their capacity for ecstasy through giving birth. When enough women realize that birth is a time of great opportunity to get in touch with their true power, and when they are willing to assume responsibility for this, we will reclaim the power of birth and help move technology where it belongs— in the service of birthing women, not as their master.

For many women, having a baby is their first experience of being connected with other women and with their vast creativity. It has the potential to transform the ways in which we think about ourselves. As one patient said to me, “I felt at one with every woman who ever gave birth. I felt powerful and in touch with something within me that I never knew was there. I took my place among the lineage of women as mothers.”

13
Motherhood:
Bonding with Your Baby

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed
before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something
absolutely new.

—Yogi Rajneesh

T
he process of becoming attached to a new baby begins long before the actual birth and continues long afterward. Still, every effort should be made to optimize the labor, birth, and postpartum environment because this is a particularly sensitive period that deeply imprints both mother and baby, setting the stage for their life together. During this time, the bodies of both mother and baby are flooded with prolactin, oxytocin, and beta-endorphin— neurochemicals that have been called “the molecules of belonging” because they help establish a deep sense of trust and belonging in a baby. Like Cupid’s arrow, they help a new mother fall blissfully in love with her baby and also with those who have supported her during labor and birth. These neurochemicals make the mother far more sensitive to her environment as well. That’s why the events associated with birth have a very powerful effect on a mother’s feelings about herself, her caregivers, and her new baby.

Our understanding of this biologically programmed sensitive period has come light-years in the last few decades. And voluminous research has been done on the biological effects of prolactin and how it engenders trust. In a nutshell, labor, birth, and the postpartum period—and all the experiences the mother and baby have during this time—set down the original wiring between the neurological system, the endocrine system, and the immune system—which in turn sets the stage for one’s state of health for the rest of one’s life.

When I was a medical student, a newborn baby was quickly wrapped in a sterile drape, shown to the mother only briefly, as though the baby’s life depended on being somewhere else, and then whisked off to a warmer in the nursery, while the mother looked on with pleading eyes, aching to hold her creation. During my residency, we began to place babies on their mothers’ ab domens instead of putting them immediately into the warmer. If a mother holds her baby skin to skin with a blanket over both, the baby doesn’t need a warmer, because the mother is the warmer—which is as it should be. At a normal birth, the mother swoops her baby into her arms and holds her full frontal against her skin as soon as the child is born. She knows this baby is hers and needs to be welcomed and comforted imme diately. It’s also very helpful for the new baby to become colonized with her mother’s bacteria by being held skin to skin. This helps establish healthy immunity.

The birth of a baby has great significance not just for the mother but also for the father. The more he is included, the better. Margaret Mead once said that the reason so many cultures banned fathers from births was that if they participated, they would be so hooked by the experience and the new baby that they would never be able to go out, steel themselves, and “do their thing” in quite the same way. I believe that the increased participation of men in childbirth—not as bosses or saviors, but as witnesses to the awe of the moment—holds great potential for balancing our world.

I never wanted my own babies to go to the hospital nursery, because I was aware of how different the atmosphere in the nursery was from what I wanted for them. They had just spent forty weeks listening to my heartbeat, bathed in warm fluid in a darkened space. In the hospital nursery, they would be isolated in small bassinets, alone, under fluorescent lights that were on twenty-four hours per day, cared for by a stranger. I knew that my entire physiology was set up by nature so that my baby and I could become “attached.” The breast colostrum (first milk) contains antibodies optimally suited to protect the baby from germs, and the suckling of the child produces hormones that help the uterus contract. Babies are innately most interested in eye contact at a distance of about twelve inches, the distance between a mother’s eyes and those of her nursing infant. Looking into my baby’s eyes, having her look back at me, having her sleep close to me skin to skin—all of these events have been set up by nature as the “glue” that continues the mother-infant bond that begins in utero. I knew that these experi ences were important for both of us.

Too many babies are taken to the nursery to “get cleaned up” after birth (to get rid of all that filthy vagina stuff!). The process of bathing can lower a baby’s body temperature to the point that the nurses won’t let the baby out of the nursery again to be with the mother until the temperature is back up! I figured, why bathe the baby and make her cold? Why not just nurse her, keep her near me, and hang out together?

When I had my first baby, I went to the postpartum floor, but I kept Ann with me. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I took her with me. A nurse came in and yelled through the door, “Where is the baby?” I replied, “In here with me.” She said, “You’re going to have to learn to leave her sometime.” I replied, “Not on the first day of her life!”

I was afraid of my vulnerability postpartum. So many mothers were undermined by the nurses and their rules, and I didn’t want to have to argue with them about when I could and couldn’t hold my baby. I wanted my own mother to be able to hold her first female grand child. In those days, the hospital rule was that only the immediate family could hold the baby, as though the hospital “owned” the child. (Though hospital rules have now changed, even as a doctor I had to fight with the nurses back then to let grandparents hold their new grandchild. Sometimes, depending on the nurse involved, I didn’t get very far.)

Expecting a hospital stay to be restful was the stuff of mythology, I knew. My home was where I wanted to be, so I left the hospital on the day of delivery both times. The first few weeks of life are a crucial time of adjustment for both the baby and the parents. I wish now that I had spent even more time with my newborns. The first three months after a baby is born are known as the fourth trimester. During this time, the mother’s body serves as a kind of “external” placenta for the baby. And the baby herself is considered an “external fetus” who still requires a great deal of contact with her mother’s body for optimal regulation of her breathing, temperature, digestion, and so on.

John Kennell, M.D., is a pioneer in the field of neonatal (newborn) care.
¹
He and his colleague, Marshall Klaus, M.D., became involved with the treatment of high-risk babies.
High-risk
refers to any baby who requires intensive surveillance at birth and in the first few days, weeks, or months of life. The majority of high-risk babies are born premature. Many premature babies’ bodily systems aren’t fully developed at birth, and this causes them to have an increased risk of lung problems, developmental and feeding problems, and infection. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, Drs. Kennell and Klaus found that there was an unusually high percentage of battering by the mothers of babies who were born prematurely or who were otherwise sick and whose care was taken over by the nursery staff with the mothers not included, and they wanted to understand why. Their research, first on mother-infant bonding and then on parent-infant bonding (adding the father), showed that mothers whose babies stay with them from birth onward bond better and are more attentive to their babies’ needs than are those whose babies are whisked away to the nursery to be cared for by “experts.”
²
(This is especially true in those mothers who have fewer resources available to them because of poverty, abuse, single parenthood, etc.) These babies are also healthier and more intelligent overall, months and even years later. (The human psyche and soul are very resilient, however. Separation doesn’t necessarily cause irreversible damage, but it should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.)

Klaus and Kennell’s research verified what should be common sense to everyone—that human touch and concern have a measurable impact on a baby’s health. One study on infant touching—known as “tactile stimulation”— indicated that a group of premature infants who were stroked regularly gained weight much faster than those who weren’t touched—even when both groups were fed the same diet. And in a study at the University of Miami the touched babies were discharged from the hospital earlier—a cost savings of thousands of dollars per baby.
³
Touch should be thought of as a lifelong nutrient. After all, the skin is derived from the same embryonic layer as the brain and central nervous system. When we stroke a baby’s skin (or have our own stroked), it lowers stress hormones, increases the hormones of belonging, lowers blood pressure, and enhances health on all levels. An impressive body of research continues to show these benefits for both mother and baby. (For more information, see the research of Tiffany Field, Ph.D., at the website of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine;
www.miami.edu/touch-research.
)

Touching is so simple, so instinctive. Pregnant mothers automatically stroke their bellies, sending love and energy to the unborn and prac ticing for when the baby is born. How could we ever have devised a system in which babies were separated from their parents’ love and touching in the first minutes of life and sent alone to nurseries run by strangers?
⁴
No mammal leaves its children unattended and unsuckled the way humans do. A mother bear is at her most dangerous when she’s protecting her cubs. She won’t let anyone or anything come near them. Many women could use a little more bear energy.

One of the primary ways a baby learns trust and love is through touch. James Prescott, Ph.D., who created and directed the Developmental Behavioral Biology Program at the National Institutes of Health’s division of Child Health and Human Development, has done comparative studies of child development in different cultures. His research has found that societies that physically hold and love their children and are not sexually repressive are peaceful. But those societies (like ours) that deprive infants, children, and adolescents of our primal need for touch are far more violent. In fact, children who are touch-deprived often develop a disorder in which they are unable to deal effectively with stress hormone surges, which are a precursor to lashing out in violence. (For more information, visit
www.violence.de
.) Nature has designed labor, birth, and the postpartum period as a crucial time to maximize touch. This imprints well-being. For more information on healthy attachment (including the benefits of co-sleeping, “wearing” your baby, and more), visit the website of Attachment Parenting International (API),
www.attachmentparenting.org
. I also recommend the book
Attached at the Heart:
8 Proven Parenting Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate
Children
(
iUniverse.com
, 2009) by API cofounders Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker.

Culturally, we’ve all participated in subtle and not-so-subtle abuse of our vulnerable newborns in the name of science, partly out of fear and doubting of our own natural instincts. Putting burning sil ver nitrate or erythromycin ointment into infants’ eyes to prevent gonococcal infection is one example. Why do this to all babies, even those whose mothers don’t have gonorrhea or chlamydia? I signed a waiver to forgo putting anything in my baby’s eyes. I knew I didn’t have gonorrhea or chlamydia, and I couldn’t see why my baby should have to undergo treatment for something I didn’t have. The waiver absolved the hospital of all responsibility for my choice, which is as it should be. (By the way, laws vary by state on whether or not new parents can refuse such treatment. Check with your local Department of Health for the laws in your area, although be prepared for a bit of a runaround since this isn’t a common question and the person you speak with may not immediately know the answer.)

Clamping the cord immediately after birth is another example of an overly stressful act against our newborns, which can even be dangerous because it can lead to too little blood volume in the baby—and decreased tissue oxygenation. Nature designed birth so that the baby will receive backup oxygenated blood from her mother via the still-pulsating umbilical cord during the time when her lungs and heart are undergoing the profound changes necessary to switch from a water to an air environment. Once the baby is breathing well on her own and her circulation has been established, the umbilical cord vessels natu rally close down on their own. And when the cord is allowed to pulsate until it stops, it also helps normalize blood volume in the baby, making sure that the baby’s circulation is adequate. Clamping the cord early is not necessary in the vast majority of cases. When babies are sick or premature, the extra oxygenated blood that they can get from a pulsing umbilical cord helps resuscitate them optimally and can make the difference between life and death. (Far too many premature babies who undergo premature cord clamping end up with hypo volemia, not enough blood volume, and then need transfusions once they get to the intensive care nursery.) Clamping the cord immediately after the baby’s birth forces the baby to make the switch over to air more quickly than is necessary. Many mothers and doctors feel that this gives the baby a feeling of panic—that there is not enough air. This practice is like shouting a command, “Okay, breathe now— or else!”