A mama roar bellows out and a baby is brought into the world. A baby’s first cry is heard. A mother accepts her newborn baby into her warm and loving arms and cries for joy as she looks down for the first time into her new baby’s eyes. It is magic. As her doula, I smile. I hold back a tear for fear of it looking less professional for me to shed one.
This woman’s body has worked so hard. The last 9 months a veritable miracle has occurred. Two people have come together to create a new life. It seems so common, something that happens every day and yet there’s something mysterious about how a perfect baby is made with very little input from us. Sure, the healthy eating and exercise help to create this masterpiece, but at no time did we need to tell our body to create a placenta to feed our baby nourishment and oxygen, or tell the cells how to exquisitely divide into a new life form.
This woman has spent 9 months doting over her growing belly, loving it, sometimes longing for the day baby would come out and meet her. So many preparations are made. Rooms prepared, items purchased, showered with gifts to help get the couple or mother ready for this new addition that is sure to change her life forever.
She has likely dreamed about the moment of birth, meeting her baby for the first time. Her body began to release the right hormones to start the whole process when it knew baby and body were ready for it to begin. It may have begun quickly or perhaps this baby and body needed a slow start, a calm beginning to new life. As her body progressed through labour, more intricately timed hormones are released, many we do not yet know about, creating an environment, a perfect environment for a baby’s passage out and transition to new life outside the womb. Without interference from outside modern medications and interventions, this process is allowed to happen smoothly and perfectly. At the perfect pace, the baby makes its way out and now lies on its mother’s tummy, gazing into her eyes.
And then violently robbed from this natural habitat, the baby is whisked away so the nurse can perform random (and yet non-urgent) checks, such as weight, length measurements, giving baby a painful shot of Vitamin K as well as gooping up its eyes with an antibiotic in case mother has an undiagnosed case of STDs. Baby cries, arms flailing about, jerking up as if reaching to find his mother. Mom says “can I have my baby”, the room’s medical professionals erupt in laughter, “you’ll have baby forever after this. It’ll just be a few minutes”. Everyone laughs but me. I know this baby needs to be with its mother and mother with baby. My eyes find the clock on the wall. Only 4 minutes did baby get to stay with mother.
The second hand of the clock catches my eye and my ears. Tick, tick, tick, tick. All the sounds of the room fade for me and my heart aches. It begins to feel like it’s climbing to my throat and beats in time with each precious second lost in separation. It aches for the baby taken away from his mother. His mother who’s body had so perfectly orchestrated the exact set of hormones for her to fall in love with her baby while gazing into his eyes. Tick, tick, tick. She looks to me saddened. I whisper, “he looks marvelous, you can ask for him”. Faced with a room of professionals, a doctor still between her legs, she sheepishly asks for her new son. More laughter. My heart cries inside. Tick, tick, tick.
The sound becomes more and more unbearable to me as this moment passes by. A moment that will never again occur. A moment that has long lasting implications to this mother-baby bond and relationship. A moment that may affect a baby’s ability to bond, love, develop normally. Tick, tick, tick. I want to scream for her, and also for the baby I had so many years ago that was also whisked away, not knowing at the time the long lasting implications it would have for us. The mother says to me “I really want to breastfeed”. Tick, tick, tick. I softly encourage her to speak-up, telling her what they are doing with baby: weight, measurements. At one point she hears the nurses chatting, looking down at her baby. She says “he must be fine if they’re just chatting”. He lies there in front of them under the warmer. WHY? WHY?! My head is swimming, spinning, wondering how and why we can allow this special, once in a lifetime moment to pass by, while we idly chat about our weekend, looking over this new babe away from its mother. Tick, tick, tick. My mind wanders to my teachings, when I remind couples what happens when a mammal is separated from her baby. Most people know she comes to reject her baby. What makes us think we are so different? As logical beings we tell ourselves we’re supposed to love and care for our baby, but for so many mothers separated from their baby, medicated to the point their body ceases to produce these important hormones, they know the truth. Their heart doesn’t feel the same. Or they simply don’t know how good it can be when it happens the way it was meant to be.
Baby is finally swaddled tight and brought over to his mother, told that his breathing may not be perfect and they may take him again soon. I wonder in my head “how could his breathing be perfect when his cord was cut so quickly and he hasn’t seen his mother’s arms, breath, eyes, or heard her heartbeat?” I help her to unswaddle him so she can really meet him, really be with him, skin to skin, heart to heart. The way nature intended. My eyes drift to the clock. More than 30 minutes have passed since birth. Almost all of those minutes away from the precious place that had been perfectly designed for his first hour. And yet much of it has already passed. This moment will NEVER again be available. Will never again return. My ears still hear the deafening sound of the clock. I am so aware of the precious time lost. And yet, I grab the camera and try to act happy about mother and her new baby. Really my heart is aching. I want to put on a more real smile, but I fake through them. I am sad for her loss, a loss she is very cognizant of. I’m sad that when she tried to ask for her baby like she is hormonally driven to do, that her request is met with laughter.
My heart realizes why I continue to do the work I do. Not only in the birthing room, but outside of it where I can advocate for change in policy. My head is already swimming with the wording I will use when I write a letter on behalf of a local advocacy group I belong to, drawing the hospital’s attention to the evidence, yes, the good solid research that supports uninterrupted skin-to-skin for one hour. I wonder how the hospitals have come to thinking this is best for moms and babies? I later read through my emails and see a great comment from well-respected doctor who really seems to care about women. He says “the problem with guidelines is they’re like cookbooks that allow (and sometimes encourage) the brain to shut off”.
The Options Expert
