(that means baby kangaroo!)
The NY Times ran an article this week on "kangaroo care", and it's encouraging and sweet and in some ways so obvious...
Again, I appreciate the medical community and their tools and their science and their drugs, and when those types of interventions are necessary, I welcome and advocate their use. But I see so many instances where the intervention becomes the norm, and it stresses me out.
How does the saying go? To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail?
Hmmmm...I just read another blog post about how some hospitals are getting rid of nurseries (where the babies can sleep in those little salad bins) and requiring the mother's to have babies sleep in their rooms. Proponents of this idea bring up a lot of the same points as this article: the closeness encourages bonding, it's natural, etc. As someone who is predisposed to Postnatal Depression, this whole idea sounds like a nightmare to me. Sure, it sounds great, and maybe for most mothers it would work very well. But if you strapped a baby to my chest I would go INSANE. When we had our last baby we put her in the nursery for every minute that she wasn't nursing. And it was the best experience of my life. And I came home rested, refreshed, and ready to take care of all my kids. And yes, I bonded with her and love her (don't tell the others, but she might even be my favorite).
ReplyDeleteAs usual, I've completely ignored the intent of the article and gone off on my own tangent. In the circumstances that the article describes, where incubators are scarce and they have seen success with this method, then by all means I support it. But I worry that in this country we are going a little too far in the "natural" direction -- and by that I mean forcing mothers to do things the hippie way and making them feel guilty if they don't.
Sorry for getting so off topic...
Jessica - thanks for the thoughts, and your experience certainly weighs in my consideration of my own life decisions.
ReplyDeleteI guess I would like to know more specifics about "the best experience" of your life; was the child in this case delivered vaginally or via cesarean, and was she early or full term?
As to the question of guilt and/or the pursuit of some ultimate earthy-crunchy-granola-treehugging birth plan...that's not really my bag, baby.
I'm a big fan of what works, and what works most efficiently/effectively. If that means that I want to take off my Nikes to undo the damage shoe companies have inflicted on our experience of running or that I want a less "medical" birth experience (in particular those cases where medical "innovation" created complications that were not necessary) by opting for more traditional processes.
I don't think any mother or father should be a target for the guilt guns for choosing an option that worked for them; you will not see me playing Tom Cruise's role in the Brooke Shields depression drugs drama.