by Carmela K Baeza, MD, IBCLC As I was looking at images of mothers with facemasks and their newborns, I kept wondering what kind of a shock this would be for the baby. Babies are wired to look at their parents´ faces and learn to read and to express emotions from birth. A perinatal…
by Ibnoe Olza, perinatal psychiatrist Dear midwife, How are you? I have spoken with several of your colleagues, others have written to me. They have told me of your feelings of frustration and impotence, of your exhaustion, of your giving of self. Of the difficult job you are facing in your birthing rooms since the…
Richard Fletcher, SMS4dads program for new dads. Dear new or soon-to-be fathers Providing the care and support to a pregnant mother and then discovering your fathering role within your new family is an exciting and important task, which has few guidelines. We hope you’re going okay and managing the highs and lows. We also want…
As the world prioritizes physical distance to detain or slow down the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), a new study from Florida Atlantic University shows that physical contact between mother and infant is essential for optimal neurological development, maturation and regulation during infancy. Mother-infant dyads show high oxytocin levels and are less impacted by stress, which…
by Ibone Olza, perinatal psychiatrist. Dear patient, Thinking about you, I realize you might be a mother who has been separated from her infant. Or perhaps a father. I know of some cases where both, mother and father, are going through coronavirus infection, isolated, without their newborn. Maybe mother is in the hospital, alone, and…
Postpartum should not be a time of battle. It should be a time of wellbeing, of enjoying your hard-earned, beautiful postpartum – a time of mothering with pleasure, to lessen the print of these scary times we are forced to live, by kissing, holding, hugging, loving your baby and being together hours on end. By Esther…
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory tract infection caused by a newly emergent coronavirus, that was first recognized in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. While most people with COVID-19 develop only mild or uncomplicated illness, approximately 14% develop severe disease that requires hospitalization and oxygen support, and 5% require admission to an intensive care…
A study published in the latest edition of Archives of Women’s Health has found that instrumental births (those requiring forceps, vacuum extraction, etc.) and cesarean sections are related to a higher number of psychological difficulties after birth – ranging from lack of adjustment to motherhood to post-traumatic stress disorder. To put these conclusions into perspective,…
According to some sources, when a woman in Sparta (Ancient Greece) hadn’t gone into labour after nine months, other women would go to her house to berate her almost violently. They would hurl all the grievances in her face that they had kept to themselves during the pregnancy and the heated exchange usually triggered the…
Obstetricians… Two of the mothers I visited today at the breastfeeding clinic recounted their birth stories to me. Though both had been similar in the workings (hospital births, vaginal, no epidural, some synthetic oxytocin), each mother had a completely different story to tell. For one, it had been a wonderful, empowering experience. For…
