Passionate about lying-in
I’ve had a number of people e-mail me requesting the prescription for lying-in which I talk about in the September-October 2006 issue of Mothering. The “prescription” comes out of Bridget Lynch’s many years of clinical work, research and post-doctoral writing and I was blessed to have received the lessons as part of my experience. I look forward to one day reading about the history and clinical results she observed, and if and when that time comes, I will write here about where to find it.
What I have not written as much about are the reasons behind why lying-in was so successful for me and why I feel passionately about it for every woman. It brought into focus for me the consumer nature of Planet Baby, and how very distanced from the connecting-with-baby experience it can make us.
For all the advice I received from friends and colleagues about labour and what I should be scared about, I got precious little information about the real-time experience of early mothering. I did hear cute remarks about there being “some things mothers shouldn’t share with non-mothers”, which I always took to mean, “You’ll find out soon enough!”. Beyond understanding the need for things like diapers, wipes, a crib and plenty of tiny clothes, I was pretty much prepared to learn on the fly.
When my midwife Bridget presented me with the list of items I’d need for a homebirth, I was both very amused and completely perplexed. The list included garbage bags, copious wash cloths, 2 dozen receiving blankets, a plastic sheet (I understood that one!) and olive oil. That list was the door opener to conversations about what the first weeks with my baby would look like.
From this stepping off point, Bridget told me I might go through 6-12 or more receiving blankets a day for swaddling, replacing soiled swaddling blankets, bed-sheet protection from leaking breast milk, burp blankets and shoulder protectors, and general purpose baby-bodily-fluid clean-up. I was surprised at the variety of uses for these amazing pieces of rectangular fleece (soft and reasonably priced at Baby Love Products) and astonished that I was so ignorant. I’d been around babies before, but obviously I had not concept of the whole picture of their care.
But I also hadn’t put a critical eye on the long list of “necessities” which I gleaned from popular magazines. During our discussions about preparations, I realized that simple glycerin soap was appropriate for washing the baby, and I could do that in the tub with me, without the use of an infant bath. I wouldn’t need either baby wash or baby shampoo until the baby sat up and might get soap in her eyes!! I also found that all those gifted teeny wash cloths could be used with warm water for washing bums, instead of disposable, perfumed wipes. When I asked why people use mineral-based baby oil when one can use olive or almond oil to moisturize newborn skin, I got the increasingly familiar response, “because we can buy it.” Talc? Corn-starch. Commercial bum-cream? Lanolin-based natural oil. Baby lotion? Calendula lotion. My shopping list changed as my mind was opened to the nature of the marketplace on this Planet Baby and it helped me make choices that were targeted on gentle care for my daughter. I browsed less for what might be out there, believing with my keep-it-simple approach that I had everything we might need.
Lying-in kept things so simple in the house for 15 days, that I was free to flow with the stuff I had no idea about. For example, I had no idea about the way that breasts leaked milk until they started dripping (or gushing as was often the case when the other breast let the milk down). This was clearly one of the little secrets mothers keep from non-mothers! I had never even heard of breast pads, and was relieved when Bridget pointed out that a little pressure would stop the geyser from spouting! Similarly, I had no idea newborns were sooo noisy when they slept! I might have missed that if my daughter had slept in another room, and although it was the beginning of years of sleep deprivation I was so glad to hear it!
I wrote in Mothering that if had I turned away from my daughter instead of lying-in, I would not have seen how her whole self needed nurturing when she was hungry: she needed to feel physically safe and satiated, emotionally fed and ordered, and her soul needed a safe harbour in my readily available arms. I only knew that because I saw her whole body respond frantically to her hunger, a hunger she felt on every level. So I feel blessed to have been close enough to feed her needs and believe that keeping-it-simple makes a difference in how we relate to our babes. Everything else can wait when everything you need is right in front of you.