Mothers know instinctively the value of the first hours after birth, writes Kathryn Holmquist
Birth experts say it is unlikely that the Cork baby switch could have happened if St Finbarr's Hospital had strictly enforced the Baby-Friendly Hospitals Initiative, to which it subscribes.
The initiative, introduced by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF in 1989, states in item seven: "Practise rooming- in: allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day."
Ms Sue Jameson, president of Cuidui-Irish Childbirth Trust said yesterday: "Mother and baby should never be separated unless a medical emergency requires it. If this policy had been in action, it is very unlikely the baby switch could have taken place."
The Southern Health Board has confirmed St Finbarr's supports the initiative, which is also endorsed by the Eastern Regional Health Authority. The board says all mothers are encouraged by their gynaecologists to keep their babies with them at all times unless in cases of Caesarean sections, epidurals or medical emergencies. Otherwise, babies are taken to the nursery only if the mother requests it.
Ms Teresa McGrath, one of the mothers in the Cork case, told the Pat Kenny Show on RTÉ Radio yesterday the birth was normal and she then placed her baby in the nursery overnight so that she could have a "good night's sleep". Next morning, she reclaimed the wrong baby and many hours later, discovered that her own baby was being breast-fed by another mother, also named McGrath.
According to Ms Benig Mauger, who is a birth teacher, the emotional distress of a mother who discovers that she has spent 24 hours nurturing the wrong baby cuts to the quick of our deepest anxieties around the birth experience.
Ms Mauger, who is a Jungian psychotherapist, mother and author of Songs from the Womb: Healing the Wounded Mother, says: "Mothers instinctively know the importance of the first minutes and hours after birth. Mothers and babies should never be separated."
She told The Irish Times yesterday that "while we do know that the baby is a conscious being in the womb and at the newborn stage, all that the \ babies will have felt is confusion".
Ms Mauger sees the incident as a symptom of medicalised childbirth, where mothers surrender their own instincts to the medical profession.
Until relatively recently in human history, mothers shared breast-feeding and even grandmothers breast-fed their grandchildren. If a mother was sick or died in childbirth, being breast- fed by another woman was often the child's only chance of survival.
• Ms Mauger is speaking on November 14th at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, and on November 29th at Mardyke Arena Leisure Centre, UCC, both at 7.30 p.m. Contact www.globalireland.com/soulconnections or (01)497 0501.