Being born is that moment when your mother does what other people dressed in green and white tell her until they catch you and separate you from her to do a lot of things to you, as soon as possible, to make sure you're okay without you having the opportunity, many times, to be with her again until after a few hours.
That is to be born, or that has been for a long time, unfortunately, because for some time it has been seen that being born shouldn't be that, but something much more normal, more natural and less stressful. Something like leaving your mother's womb with the help or not of people dressed in green and white who leave you with your mother as soon as you are born, while they see that you are well, trying to bother the least and trying not to separate you unless It is essential.
Something like that should be, but not yet everywhere, much less, because we are far away to ensure that respect in childbirth and birth is extended and that the prominence is not of the professionals, but of the mother and the baby. And for sample, a button. It is common for mothers to complain about their births and how they felt about the process, but it is not so much that those who speak are professionals, so today we want to share a writing that we could read yesterday in the blog of Childbirth is Ours, in which a neonatologist explains how she feels working there where there is still lack of empathy and plenty of violence when it comes to receiving babies.
The words of a neonatologist
Sometimes doctors need to hear things in a certain way to believe it ... there is so much mistrust even in nature and in life processes ... and childbirth is handled with such fear on many occasions, that we distort the unique moment, sacred, special in which a new being is born.My experience as a neonatologist for 6 years, in which I have worked in different hospitals in Tenerife, Lanzarote, Madrid ... trying to remove mental and physical barriers in the infrastructures that do not support or stop at the importance of the mother-child bond, is that even There is a long way to go.
I have been conditioned so many times by the rest of the staff that running gave me the baby, when all I have always wanted is to observe him while breathing on his mother. I have felt in my skin the pain of his breathing when I cut the cord beforehand, the state of exhaustion in which sometimes they reach my hands after so many unnecessary aggressions, the violence they receive as soon as they are born, "so that I cry" ... as if living and crying were synonymous ... the anguish of the people around me in a resuscitation, when I wanted to give the baby time and recover at his own pace ... I have been happy when I have not had to do anything, when I found to sensitive midwives who have supported me and allowed me to auscultate their hearts over their mothers, or to control their pulse while they learned to breathe over their mothers ... they have been rarely ...
Every baby that separates from his mother for no reason, I have felt it on my skin ... I have apologized to so many newborns for things that I do not agree with, and that I have done and have seen do, intramuscular vitamin K, take them measures as soon as they were born, unnecessary gastric aspirations, put them in incubators to give them a "warm-up", the first 2-3 hours of life, glycemias and bottles of artificial formula without control ... how many times I had to endure the intense, deep, heartbreaking crying , of a newborn fully awake, available, expectant, who does not understand THAT EMPTY, in which we have put him and THESE AGGRESSIONS that he is continuously receiving ...
My questions have always been WHY? FOR WHAT?
Being responsible for the pain we generate, the consequences of our actions, is a pressing need to get out of ignorance, the "here it has always been done that way" or the "because yes" that have populated my years of training and practice medical
Ask for forgiveness too ... for sometimes our lack of courage to say so far, the fear of criticism among staff, not defining ourselves for lack of time, because there is too much work, because we are tired, because the direction does not change things, because "here that can't be done" ...
There are things that we honestly should not allow, and that pain to a greater or lesser extent, all of us who work in delivery rooms and in neonatal units carry it inside.
This is something that I have ALWAYS thought about, but that with the years of experience has taken root more deeply in me, and already reliving the experience of my own birth on several occasions, made me feel many things, which have led me to leave my places of work and look for professionals who share and live this vision of childbirth.
From here I would like to invite a personal reflection and alone with oneself, to the people who work in the world of birth, to find our fears, to heal our experiences of how they received us at birth, to put ourselves in the skin of a baby. , to be in a paritor with the sensitivity, love and respect that every being that comes into the world deserves.
Thank you
Monica Delgado Guerrero
Pediatrician Neonatologist
Madrid
Why? For what?
She says so (thank you very much Monica Delgado) Why such a hurry? Why so much violence? Why are professionals who can do what they want with a baby and the mother can't say anything? Are we so used to not being respected, to take anything away from us, that it seems normal for us to take away from our children? Nobody thinks about why a baby cries so much alone and cries so little with his mother?
True, health professionals work hard and do not always have the strength available to give everything they have. True, they have seen dozens, hundreds of children born, and every day they arrive at the hospital they know they will see a few more born. It is still a routine. However they have not learned, or perhaps have forgotten, that for a baby, his moment of birth is unique.
When he is born is the first and only time it will be born, it is the first contact with the outside, it is their first second of life, it is the moment in which they begin to create the bases of the person that will be in the future and the professionals who receive them are (or should be) mere companions of the moment, facilitators of the process if they are required and extremely delicate in the treatment of the baby, so that the transition from the inside of the belly, to the outside of the belly, in skin-to-skin contact, is as respectful as possible. I repeat: you, unknown, have seen hundreds of children born, I know, but I will only be born once.
