I was sitting in a hospital room with two moms talking with them about breastfeeding when one of them paused to listen to the sound of a woman who appeared to be towards the end of labor. At this hospital they do vaginal examinations to see how advanced labor is but Michel Odent says when he is assisting a birth he can tell at what point she is at by listening, even from another room. Every so often we heard another sound liberated from the depths of this birthing mom wafting down the hallway. These two moms were following her experience from afar, having just gone through their own labor and birth.
When the sounds of laboring came no more to call at our ears I excused myself to go see the newly born and observe his first hours of life. This is my favorite time to observe. They call it the Golden Hour, when the newborn is in the sensitive period of the first opportunity for bonding. This little guy was getting his first bath when I arrived. He was looked over by his doctor and got the all OK. He then spent 20 minutes on his mom skin to skin while she delivered the placenta and had a few stitches. It was the first time I had seen a mom with her newborn skin to skin during this process. Every other time I had observed, the baby had been dressed and was in his little bed, or was being kept warm under the heat lamp in a separate room just around the corner. These moms all cried out from the pain and discomfort of delivering the placenta and from the process of being stitched up.
Today, mom was so deeply absorbed in this new little man she had in her arms that she barely seemed to notice what they were doing. I stood next to her to spot her and her baby, just in case they needed me at any point. We noticed that his eyes were wide open so we shifted him to be able to see her face, as where the nurse had placed him he was looking at the breast. They gazed into each other's eyes and she talked him through these first 15 minutes of life outside the womb. She was done being stitched and he was dressed so the two of them could spend some more time together before he was taken to the Nursery to be thoroughly examined by the pediatrician. When that moment came I followed him there and tomorrow's post I will describe this next chapter of his life, his first great separation from the woman who created him and nurtured him in her womb for 9 months...
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