By Esther Ramírez Matos, perinatal psychologist and family therapist My body spoke to me again, last night while I was calmly reading a novel about maternity. As a traumatic birth was described, after which mother and infant were separated, I felt an intense pain in my pelvic area; I had not been so uncomfortable in…
“There are no feet too small to leave prints on this earth.” The child that dies during the perinatal stage: lifelong impact on the family Although there has traditionally been silence in our society about children who die at the beginning of life, this silence has been unravelling. Scientific papers and worldly magazines, support groups…
Nest to protect and wings to fly By Ana González Uriarte, infant psychiatrist and family therapist I just found this text that I wrote 14 years ago… Now that my youngest son has “flown” on his first journey to study abroad for this whole school year and that my 21 year old also begins…
A recent study from the University of Louisiana (summarized below) has discovered that some mothers with postpartum depression have an “altered expression of oxytocin receptors”. Oxytocin is the hormone of love, human connection and wellbeing; it is produced at high levels during birth and breastfeeding and it is intimately involved in the mother-infant bond, as…
What baby expects after birth is to breastfeed, at mother´s breast. So if a mother is going to bottlefeed, it should feel to the baby as much as breastfeeding as possible. In modern western culture, there is no substitute for a breastfeeding mother [1]. But anyone can feed the baby with a bottle. There are…
By Ibone Olza, MD PhD. Psyquiatrist. Associate Professor at Universidad de Alcalá. Director of the European Perinatal Mental Health Institute Breastfeeding today seems to be more difficult than mothers imagine or expect. In a North American study, of 1500 mothers who expressed their desire to exclusively breastfeed, only 39% were managing to do so at two…
Part I Part II When talking about newborns and their initial environment, it is necessary to consider the ecological impact of infant feeding practices. In 1991, an extensive review of the ecological benefits of breastfeeding was written by Andrew Radford. To summarize his findings, the simplicity, the convenience, the readiness, the total completeness, the…
Part I Restoring the original paradigm Humanization of childbirth has also changed the practices regarding newborn care. Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) is now recognized as the ideal care for newborns, especially premature babies, and is recommended by the World Health Organization (World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, 2003). The kangaroo…
Due to the viral spread of this video, we have asked pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Nils Bergman and his wife Jill Bergman, educator in Kangaroo Mother Care, about the baby’s reaction. Does she really sleeps with the Ommm, or does she disconnects due to a stress situation? Here are their answers: Dr. Bergman’s Analysis: Father starts to make a loud monotone note … immediate…
