Newborns Need to Be Near Their Mothers at Night
Wall Street Journal (Online) [New York, N.Y] 18 Oct 2011: /.

Significant physiological stress and disrupted sleep patterns were recorded in 2-day-old newborns who were physically separated from their mothers but remained within close proximity in the same room, according to a study in Biological Psychiatry.

Research has shown that close contact between mothers and newborns in the first few hours of life significantly improves breastfeeding rates. Sleeping in the same bed, however, is strongly discouraged inWestern countries.

Heart-rate monitors recorded the physiological responses of 16 South African newborns, 10 boys and six girls, during one hour of skin-on-skin contact with their mothers and one hour facing her from a  bassinet. Mothers were 17 to 40 years of age and had no post-natal complications.

Compared with close maternal contact, separation triggered a nearly three-fold increase in autonomic nervous system activity, including heart-rate and respiration changes, and an 86% decrease in quiet or non-rapid eye movement sleep, the study found.

A drop in body temperature could explain the sleep changes but infants aren’t well evolved to cope with maternal separation, researchers said. Disrupting important early maternal-neonatal interactions may affect later development, they said.

Caveat: The newborns’ body temperature, cortisol levels and other acute-stress markers weren’t measured. The study was small.

The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”.

It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there are now 145 Laureates from 61 countries.

Presented annually in Stockholm at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament, the Right Livelihood Award is usually shared by four Recipients, but not all Laureates receive a cash award. Often an Honorary Award is given to a person or group whose work the Jury wishes to recognise but who is not primarily in need of monetary support. The prize money in 2011 was 150,000 €. The prize money is for ongoing successful work, never for personal use.

2011 Laureate Ina May Gaskin has been called “the most famous midwife in the world”. A pioneer in a millennium-old profession on the brink of extinction in her country, she combines scientific evidence and analysis with her own broad experience in exercising natural medicine. Ina May Gaskin is a role model for midwives who still dare to think in different paths, trying to implement more humane obstetrics in their countries, and providing women with the chance to choose the way of giving birth that seems right for them.

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