The Change in Environment for a Baby Post-Birth

Imagine for a while the nature of the changes in his world that occurred at birth. From 98.6-degree warmth to 70-degree room temperature. From total darkness to glaring overhead lights in the hospital. From relative quiet, where instead of mother's familiar voice and the soothing rhythmical sounds of her body (her heartbeat, breath sounds. etc.) there are sudden loud, unfamiliar, startling noises. From being carried constantly with the rocking motion from Mother's hip movements, to the utter stillness of a crib. From soft, smooth, salt-water feelings to dry, sterile, harsh sheets (you will see a red rash on the baby's skin from contact). From being fed continuously from Mother's body via the lifeline, to being ignored until it's convenient for the nurses. Can you blame any baby for wanting to go home with Mother? For wanting to be loved, and held, and rocked, and talked to, and fed when hungry?

Vow, what about the mother? We find the mother who gets to hold and breast-feed her baby immediately after it is born, and who does not have her baby taken from her to be put in what I sarcastically call the kid concentration camp," or hospital nursery, has not only a more psychologically stable baby but is herself a far better, more loving mother. The benefits of togetherness of mother and baby are reciprocal. There are many, many benefits of giving birth without medication of any nature, but the greatest benefit of all is probably that an unmedicated natural-childbirth mother can be trusted to have her baby with her and to care for it immediately when it is born, whereas a mother who has had any medication—I care not how supposedly small the dose —is mentally confused, "drunk" from drugs, and not to be trusted with the baby. If complications occurred, justifying the giving of drugs, then this is purposeful and necessary and the mother and baby should be separated. With proper training of husband and wife, over 90 percent of the mothers neither need nor ask for drugs and the exuberant, alert, capable mother is perfectly capable to handle, hold, and care for her baby. She needs no substitute mother and eagerly accepts her baby.

...and changes for the mother as well.