Bad Parent: Against Rooming In
I loved my new baby — but after a grueling labor, I just wanted to sleep.
by Kim Brooks
June 25, 2009
As a result, most hospitals now offer parents the choice of having their baby room with them or go to the nursery. And such a choice makes sense; many of the moms I know spoke glowingly about their rooming-in experiences — especially moms who had relatively
short labors or sleepy babies who gave them the chance to recover from the not insignificant strains of childbirth. But other women — women who had marathon labors like mine, or difficult labors, women who bore fussy or hungry or colicky babies and then attempted
to care for them through the night — found the experience torturous, or in many cases, simply impossible, and were grateful to be able to send the baby to the nursery for a night or two before going home.
Often, I find myself recalling with bitter amusement the tour guide's explanation for our hospital's policy: "We believe that new mothers actually sleep better with their babies close by."
Yes, this must be why enemy interrogators frequently use tape recordings of screaming infants as a form of low-grade torture, because the sound is just so soporific.
Options are great. But so is rest and recovery.
Could a more likely explanation be that rooming-in allows hospitals to cut down on staffing and other costs associated with running a nursery? It's hard for me to accept that it's really "better" for a woman who has been laboring for days, who perhaps hasn't
slept well in weeks, to be kept awake for an additional two nights and sent home with her new infant in a state of debilitating exhaustion.
The seriousness of this situation descended on me a couple of days after arriving home, when I felt a sore throat and muscle aches coming on, which I thought might be a flu. I completely broke down. I can't do this, I thought. I haven't slept in five nights.
If I get sick, even a little, I won't be able to take care of this baby. I phoned my mother, who'd been planning on flying in to visit a few days later. She answered the phone and I greeted her by repeating the same word again and again: Help, help, help.
I'm all for bonding. I'm all for women having the option of keeping their new babies beside them. Options are great. But so is rest and recovery. So is not being made to feel like a failed mother if you need to let someone else — say, a well-trained nurse — help care for your newborn while you regain the strength that labor saps.
That's why, should I do it all again, I will deliver at a hospital where rooming-in is an option and not an expectation — where, should the need arise, I can stare into my new baby's big beautiful eyes and caress his little hands all night long, in my dreams.
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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