Treating mother’s like children

Bellies and Babies Blog has a great post titled How can we expect to make mothers out of women when we treat them like children?

I completely agree with her post.  How we are treated during pregnancy and birth can effect our mothering.  Reading it brought me back to after Devon was born.  He was in the NICU and I remember one of the first times I went down to feed him, I was so nervous, but then so proud.  It had been a busy night in the NICU and the nurse hadn’t really been paying attention to what I was doing.  Later she called my room and yelled at me, because I had fed him too much and now he was sick. 

I was devasted.  I felt that I had harmed my baby.  I felt like a shamed child, one who needed to be told how to take care of my baby and apparantly I wasn’t doing a good job.  I remember just crying and crying, while my dumbfounded husband held me. 

Later that nurse apologized, but I think that guilt and sense of not knowing what is best for Devon has lingered for years.  Mind you, he was totally fine, he just threw up some of the milk.  But that feeling of shame.  I can still feel it in the pit of my stomach and it makes me want to cry. 

I want to help moms feel confident about their mothering starting in pregnancy, through their birth and after.  I wish all care providers would be more conscious of the effect they have.