TREND NEWS CENTER
More than one in 10 women struggle to bond with their baby, survey shows
More
than one in 10 women struggle to bond with their baby, with the majority saying
they are given no support from healthcare staff, a survey has found.
Nearly
three-quarters (73%) of women said they received no information or advice on
bonding with their baby in the first few weeks after birth, despite guidance
for doctors and nurses recommending that they assist with emotional attachment
to encourage healthy child development.
The
respondents said societal pressure to enjoy pregnancy, and assumptions that
bonding would happen automatically, left them feeling guilty and afraid when it
didn’t, according to a survey of more than 1,000 mothers, undertaken by the
Parent-Infant Foundation.
Factors
that can affect bonding during pregnancy include the mother’s physical and
mental health and past trauma, such as baby loss.
Tamora
Langley, head of policy at the Parent-Infant Foundation, said: “We understand
staff are under huge time pressures, but checking on emotional wellbeing as
well as physical wellbeing needs to become the norm.
“With
training, a wider range of professionals and practitioners should be able to
have conversations about emotional attachment and bonding. Parents who are
struggling may need specialist parent-infant relationship support, but they can
only get that if they are confident to speak up in the first place. We must
challenge the myth of the ‘perfect parent’, so that pregnant women feel able to
ask for help when they need it.”
The
Royal College of Midwives chief executive, Gill Walton, said staff shortages
meant midwives often did not have time to help with bonding. She called for a
national strategy to recruit and train more midwives so that “these vital areas
of care become the norm”.
One
woman in the survey said that despite having a number of pregnancy losses
before a healthy pregnancy, “no one seemed to understand or even mention that
it might be hard to think about building a relationship with our baby in case
the worst happened again”.
Another
said: “I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t instantly
love my son, and everyone else says things like ‘it’s the most magical time
giving birth’.”
The
survey found that 71% of respondents would have liked more support during
pregnancy to bond with their baby, while 64% said nobody talked to them about
bonding during their antenatal care.
Andrew
Whitelaw, an emeritus professor of neonatal medicine at the University of
Bristol, said a growing focus on identifying psychiatric problems in mothers,
since suicide is the most common cause of maternal mortality in the UK, meant
that midwives “do not want to increase anxiety before delivery by talking up
difficulties with bonding”.
Rather
than discussing potential challenges with bonding before birth, one of the most
effective ways of encouraging bonding was personal contact, including putting
the baby skin-to-skin naked between the mothers’ breasts for an hour or so
after delivery, he said.
An
NHS spokesperson said: “We encourage services to keep up to date with the
latest Nice guidance so they can provide the best level of care to women and
their babies. Our recently announced delivery plan for maternity and neonatal
services sets out commitments to provide personalised care and support plans,
which can include advice on baby bonding.”
Source: The Guardian