I have been waiting for this tape for years! Like so many other people in Primal Therapy, I have spent many years recovering from my traumatic birth followed by many hours of “routine” separation from my mother (abandonment trauma). In addition to that I was made to lie alone in a crib, night and day, except for “five minutes on each side” breastfeeding every four hours for the first months of life. A friend of mine, also going through similar baby trauma, described it as his Heaven or Hell Syndrome—“I am alone and in hell. Mommy comes and holds and feeds me and I am in heaven. Mommy goes away again and I am in hell once more.”
In the 1970s when many of us began reliving these traumas in Primal Therapy, we were dismissed as cranks. We were told that there was no way babies could have that much awareness. Apparently, a baby’s place was in the newborn nursery, while a new mother needed to be alone to get her sleep after the hard work of labour. Still there were those of us spending hours curled up in the foetal position, crying like n e w b o rns, and feeling that if someone didn’t come and love us soon, we wanted to die. We knew that what we were being told was wrong.
It always puzzled me how we were going to convince people that what we were experiencing was real. At the Primal Institute, Arthur Janov and Michael Holden were studying patients undergoing these primals, while the clients were connected to monitors measuring vital signs. Janov and Holden found huge changes in heart rate, blood pressure, core body temperature and brainwave patterns before, during and after these primals. It struck me then, that if we had these measurable changes decades a f t e r undergoing these traumas, surely babies must show some measurable signs of stress during the experience itself. But what were they, and how could they be measured so that h e a l t h c a re pro f e s s i o n a l s would be convinced of the need to change the t reatment that babies receive? Now—at last— we have the tape to convince them!
Dr. Bergman, who previously worked at a mission hospital in Zimbabwe, has been studying Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) for more than twelve years. There were no incubators or other technical apparatus at the hospital, and the only resources that they had in the mission hospital were the mothers. Here they found that premature babies placed on their mother’s chest— who would have died in our modern hospital incubators—survived and even thrived. On the tape Dr. Bergman brings together not only his own observations and theory, but also a summary of much of the related research over the last decade or more.
The tape has impact in two areas: live filming of mothers and babies; charts and diagrams showing the adverse effects on h e a rt rate, breathing, oxygenation and body temperature when babies are separated from their rightful habitat—skin to skin on the mother’s chest. Bergman also cites studies that found that when a mother and baby are separated, the baby experiences an outpouring of stress hormones that can reach dangerous levels—sufficient to cause brain damage in some cases.
Seeing the live footage is moving. I was entranced to watch a newborn baby placed on its mother’s body arch it’s back, push with its feet and finally find (using smell) it’s own way to the mother’s breast—then successfully latch on and nurse. Of great interest was the fact that the baby grasped the nipple in its hand and put it into its own mouth. (So that’s what the “grasp reflex” is for! Why did it take us so long to figure it out?)
It was disturbing to watch a baby that had been lying contentedly on its mother’s chest taken away and put in a crib. The baby began crying desperately, in an attempt to regain its mother. Dr. Bergman describes this as the “pro t e s t / d e s p a i r ” response (the despair seems very familiar to my own baby primals!). The purpose of this crying is to bring the mother back, but when that fails, the baby will stop crying out of exhaustion (I’ve primalled that one too). He also says that the baby stops crying to conserve energy—the body literally starts “shutting down” in order to survive. This is of interest, as in Primal Therapy, we refer to a person who has a lot of repressed pain as being “shut down.”
Dr Bergman refers to the baby’s location as its “habitat.” In whatever habitat it is, the baby will show habitat-specific behaviour. He says that there are only two possible habitats—“mother” and “other.” When the baby is skin-to-skin with the mother, it is in the growth mode and will feed and thrive. When it is away from her it will show the protest/despair reaction, crying at first and then giving up. At the same time it releases large amounts of stress h o rmones and the body (including the digestive tract) shuts down as the baby tries to survive. Babies, he says, can be in only one of these two modes at a time—thriving, or barely surviving. For those of us who have been through Primal Therapy, we know subjectively what the latter feels like to the baby. Separation anxiety, loneliness and depression are some of the ways this is carried over into adulthood. All this can be avoided if we come to understand and meet the needs of newborn and young babies (premature and full term), which is Kangaroo Mother Care for the first months of life.
But why is Kangaroo Mother Care needed for full-term and healthy infants as well as premature babies? Dr. Bergman points out the evolutionary significance of the shift (made by our early ancestors) from walking on four legs to walking upright. This alteration meant that due to gravity, the pelvis had to undergo significant physical changes. In order to contain the contents of the abdomen, the pelvic outlet had to become much more narrow.
As our early ancestors began to perfect the use of handtools, their survival abilities, intelligence and brain size increased too. With a larger head to contain the growing brain size, the smaller pelvic birth opening meant that the human foetus had to be born before it was fully developed. Human babies are born more immature and helpless than any other mammals—except the marsupials of Australia, who are born even more immature than human babies, but are cared for in the mother’s pouch till they reach maturity.
Why is this particular tape so important? As a childbirth educator, over the years I discovered that in spite of teaching and lecturing endlessly about my own experience, it was very hard, if not impossible, to get hospitals to change their procedures. I believe there is a reason for this. Most people go into denial when it comes to this subject. If they are parents or p rofessionals, acknowledging these facts will mean they have to face the possibility that they unknowingly traumatized their own children or patients. Even more threatening than that, they will be faced with opening up the repressed trauma of their own infancy. For most people, this is simply too painful to contemplate. It’s easier to say that the old ways are fine—and to go on doing them.
To counter the problem, the KMC tape is noncondemning and the research is shown in an unemotional way. The fact that mother/baby separation may cause life-long problems is acknowledged, but mentioned only once at the end. As a contrast, there are pictures of mothers with contented newborns nursing at the breast, and smiles on the mother’s faces— and the faces of staff too! The tone of the tape is enthusiastic and encouraging, which makes it possible for professionals to see this as a new and better way of doing things rather than an opening of old wounds, and a laying of guilt and blame for what was done in the past.
Our experience here in South Africa is that professionals who have seen the tape are eager to share it with others, and even use it to advocate for change in the policy of their hospitals. If you want to really do something to make the world a better place, buying a copy of this tape as a gift for your local maternity hospital is a very good way to start!
You will find ordering instructions for the tape at the KMC site: www.kangaroomothercare.com, or you can write to Dr. Nils Bergman at 8 Francis Road, Pinelands, 7441 South Africa, or phone his wife Jill at South Africa 21 531 5918.
Pat Törngren lives in Cape Town, South Africa. She knows Dr. Bergman and Marianne Littlejohn personally. Marianne, whose article “Parenting for Peace” was printed in a previous IPA Newsletter, is part of the KMC research team in Cape Town. As a result of Dr. Bergman’s research, KMC is now official policy in all state run hospitals in the Western Cape Province.“Our experience here in South Africa is that professionals who have seen the tape are eager to share it with others.”
