C-Sections May Hinder Mother-Baby Bonding

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:07:00 GMT

With nearly a third of babies in the U.S. delivered by C-section, many researchers are wondering how if, at all, the experience of undergoing labor contractions, which release hormones that are linked to maternal behavior, affects a mother’s bond with her baby.

A new study from Yale University has found that women who give birth vaginally are more responsive to their babies’ cries than women who give birth by C-section. This increased responsiveness may be linked to the brain's innate response to natural birth, since brain scans on post-partum women indicated that the areas of the brain that are linked to motivation and emotions were less active in women who had had had C-sections.

This research does come with some important caveats. The brain scans were conducted on 12 women—six of whom had given birth naturally and six of whom had had Caesarean sections. 12 is pretty small number. Also, the women who had their babies delivered by C-section had all elected to do so. So there is certainly the possibility that the maternal differences the researchers found between the two groups were due to a personality difference between mothers who choose natural births and those who opt for C-sections, even when medically unnecessary.

Lastly, the brain scans were conducted on women two to four weeks after birth. Clearly, this is no indication of what kinds of mothers they will be in the long term.

Photo: BBC

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C-Sections May Hinder Mother-Baby Bonding