Birth is Not Limited to the Medical Field. Birth encompasses the spiritual and the emotional and the psychological bond with your baby.
Birth is Mental Health.
One of the hardest moments for me to see as an advocate for mental health is policy standing in the way of immediately holding your baby.
Policies to weigh and measure baby, to hook up monitors, devices, rechecking of data and numbers all the while this tender soul that just entered into the world wants nothing more than to be feeling the warmth of your body, to be feeling the beating of your heart, to be feeling the vibrations of your voice. I’m not a believer in administrative routines and policies preventing immediate contact.
And I’m not a fan.
And so while I say nothing because it’s not my space to interfere, it’s hard to witness when a wise child that has entered into this world has to wait for that connection, whether it is waiting 15 minutes or an hour, or in my case with my younger child it was 8 hours,
in my opinion, if there is no emergency life saving intervention needed at present, policy and administrative routine can take a back seat.
The only way this will ever change
is if wise parents forego the fear of offending anyone and forego the fear of being an inconvenience,
and if parents begin to take up space in this world,
take up the space you’re entitled to as a human being with rights,
a human being who matters more than a set of administrative policies written in a manual.
Birth is not limited to the medical field.
Birth encompasses the soul the spirit and mental health.
