They say that after forty-eight hours without sleep the human brain begins to slow down. Think of a computer burdened by a hundred different open browsers. After seventy-two hours, psychosis can set in. I for one have first-hand knowledge of this process, not because I was subjected to some covert military experiment, but simply because a year and a half ago, I gave birth to my son at a family birthing center that, like many facilities of its sort, adheres to a policy of "rooming in" for new mothers.
I first learned of this policy about a month before my due date, when my husband and I took a tour of the facility. The nurse showed us one of the post-delivery rooms, letting us marvel at just how un-hospital-like it seemed. And then, as we left the room, she gestured briskly at the hospital's nursery: "But you and your babies hopefully won't be seeing much of that. Our expectation is that babies will be sleeping beside their moms. The nursery is only used for babies experiencing medical complications."
At the time, this sounded great. After waiting nine-plus months to meet the baby of my dreams, why would I possibly want to ship him off to a sterile, fluorescent-lit nursery where I wouldn't be able to stare into his eyes or caress his little hands or cuddle him against my chest? Provided the guy was in good health, why would I not want him beside me every moment of those first few days? In other words, our hospital's rooming-in policy seemed like little more than common sense . . . until, that is, I gave birth.
I know that labor isn't easy for anyone, and having talked to plenty of other moms about their experiences, I feel pretty lucky — no serious complications, no c-section, no back-labor, no tearing or vacuum extractions or other horror scenarios. I went into labor a little after midnight and thirty-two hours later: presto.
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.