The day before yesterday it was March 14, my mother’s birthday. She died in 2006, aged 70, after a life that had been difficult for her, with the result that things were also very difficult in my family of origin and that my sister died at the age of 32. Yesterday I was asked whether I had thought about my mother’s birthday and whether it still has a strong meaning for me. I had certainly thought about it: your mother’s birthday… that is a special date. Without her you would not have been here – you owe your existence to the fact that she gave birth to you. And even before that birth you were inextricably linked to her; for us humans, the bond with our mother is the first relationship in our lives. That relationship provides a blueprint for all relationships that follow.
That is why I believe that it really matters how we as a social environment and as a society deal with the mother-child relationship, especially in the early phase of motherhood, when everything is still so new and the mother role still feels so unfamiliar. If we can protect and pamper the mother during pregnancy and the postpartum period, if we can see that her primary, honourable task in that phase is that she can focus on her baby with loving attention and is not overextended and overburdened… then we create circumstances in which the baby can develop a view of humanity and the world that already supports future parenthood. If we fail to do so or fail to do so sufficiently, we lay a foundation for pain and sadness, for loneliness and trauma. I know this from both personal experience and professional knowledge.
That is how my day started last Thursday, with that awareness, through a story that came to my attention through a colleague. A mother ended up in the hospital with her baby because her baby was not growing and both she and her baby were becoming increasingly stressed. (Let’s call the baby ‘Robin’.) Mother was fully breastfeeding and she experienced the breastfeeding relationship with Robin as very important. Once admitted to the hospital, she had to deal with the rules and protocols there. For example, the paediatrician announced that mother was no longer allowed to put the baby to the breast and she had to pump all her milk, so that the nurse could see how much Robin was getting. Baby should leave at least three hours between feedings and if Robin asked to be fed sooner, mother had to ‘stretch’ and make baby wait. She was surprised by this, as the hospital admission had mainly taken place due to insufficient growth; should she not rather feed very often, mother wondered? The milk was thickened, and Robin subsequently had difficulty drinking. Robin got tired during feedings and would then stop; the nurse then took Robin into a headlock and forced the baby to continue drinking.
Mother was instructed to limit cuddling, because Robin would need rest. Not being allowed to latch and not or hardly being allowed to cuddle created a fear in mother that Robin would refuse to breastfeed and she said she could only cry all day, but she was told: “You are here for a reason, so for now you just have to do as we say.” Due to the stress of all the policies, milk production had dwindled even further. Bottle feeding was a struggle, because Robin needed a break every now and then, which was hardly given to her, and as a result, at least once, she spit out half the food, with a long time of restlessness afterwards. Mother felt broken, stated that she could no longer indicate her boundaries or fend for herself; additionally, she experienced little to no support in her own social environment. However, she was happy with the support and responses from the digital environment.
I read the story, read dozens of responses and felt painful sadness and considerable anger welling up. And yes… that of course also says something about me, that it affects me so much… I am well aware of that. And yet… the essence is that this situation was based on protocols and rules, not on the biological blueprint of mother and child. This probably happened due to a lack of knowledge, but there is a good chance that trauma also played a role, both among the healthcare providers (who no longer had confidence in the process) and the mother (who no longer dared to raise her voice). In that sense, compassion was more appropriate and my anger was therefore actually out of place, but well… sometimes the feeling of injustice about the workings of the ‘system’ takes over. After all, the approach chosen here undermines and hinders the natural behaviour of mother and baby. That is not the start you wish for mother and child, if a ‘promising start’ during the ‘first 1000 days’ is your goal. It’s not the experience they should be getting this early on. Childbed and early postpartum are ideally a phase in which mother and child are jointly ‘marinated’ in oxytocin: then the baby’s neurological development can get off to a flying start and the mother will gain the feeling that she is powerful and competent, equipped for her task as protector and ‘cheerleader’ of her baby.
It is therefore deeply sad that despite the ubiquitous insistence on ‘evidence-based’ approaches in healthcare, a mother-child couple is treated in this way. An approach like this… there is nothing ‘evidence based’ about it; this approach actually goes against all evidence.
This raises the question of why we as a society often still fall short with perinatal care. What are the consequences of this? Do we all fully realise how things can get way out of hand in the longer term…? And what can we do to reduce the knowledge gap and transform attitudes? How can we ensure that trauma-sensitive approaches becomes the norm in all sectors, so that people can flourish?
Last Tuesday I spoke for Elaa/ONE, the organisation that implements the Promising Start-program in Almere. After a short introduction, we watched the documentary ‘Resilience – The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope’ together, and afterwards we discussed the film. Beautiful things were contributed and I would have loved and enjoyed working with the group for a whole day. Hopefully we can follow up on it, because people were inspired: ‘Starting with young parents’, ‘Creating awareness’, ‘How we deal with each other as a cause of depression (not the genes)’, ‘I’m going to ask more questions’, ‘Tackling your own problems so that you don’t pass them on’, ‘The influence of emotions and trauma and the importance of talking about them’. Those are great insights! Talking about emotions is indeed very important: the origin of the word ‘e-motion’ means ‘to move outward’. Emotions want to be shared, heard and seen; If they remain ‘stuck’ inside, it causes stress and stress is the basis of almost all health problems.
Unresolved emotions… they were the basis of my mother’s difficulty with life. They were also the basis of my sister’s early death. Their pain in life is an important aspect of my intrinsic motivation for this subject: children and young parents deserve recognition and support for everything that presents itself. As individuals, as (extended) families, as a society, we all benefit from a safe and nurturing start to life. That is what I always think about on my mother’s birthday, about how she missed out on that. It is also what I think about with every presentation, every training, every consultation, how I can sow seeds in those I meet, hoping and trusting that those seeds, with warmth and a nourishing environment, will blossom in their own time.
