“Pregnancy Not An Illness99

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 2

“Pregnancy Not An Illness 99

Women having babies were not patients—most were well, normal persons, and the birth of an infant was a normal and important part of family life, Mrs N. Sutherland told members of the Christchurch Parents’ Centre on Wednesday evening. Mrs Sutherland recently spent six months in the United States, where she visited persons and institutions concerned with education and maternity care. “We still largely have the doctor-nurse-patient attitude here. A new mother is not a patient at all. She is a part of a family.

Child birth in a “sterile vacuum” which cut a woman off from her family gave her little opportunity to develop ’ “motherliness.”

The rooming-in system, in which a mother has her newborn baby with her as long as she wishes, was an essential feature of family-centred maternity care, Mrs Sutherland said.

While in Connecticut, Mrs Sutherland visited the Grace Maternity Hospital, Newhaven, which was one of the first to introduce rooming-in The technique had been pioneered by doctors, using their own wives as “guinea pigs,” who were against the attitude that pregnancy was a “nine months’ disease, with a surgical operation at the end, resulting in the appearance of a baby.” At the Grace Hospital

mothers could choose room-ing-in, or having their babies cared for in a central nursery. Lectures, films and a full explanation of each system enabled them to decide. In the rooming-in units the mothers were encouraged to keep behaviour charts on their babies, thereby learning much by observation. The mother could always see her baby, through a glass slide in her room, even when it was taken to the unit nursery for the night. Nurses required special experience and understanding for rooming-in unit service, she said. “Our maternity nurses would have to have a better and wider education for successful family-centred maternity care. “It is not an easy task for

a single woman to support a woman having a baby; understand a married woman’s role as wife and mother, and sustain her and her husband. “Such a nurse must be mature and know herself and her reactions. Such breadth of education and experience as is necessary should be more highly paid. It is in America.” She had received several “shocks” during her stay in the United States, Mrs Sutherland said. One had been the number of women who did not breast-feed their babies. Many were afraid this would spoil their figures. “Their duties as a wife come before that of being a mother.

“And the incidence of Caesarian sections would leave you aghast. It is taken for granted there,” Mrs Sutherland said.