
C
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BBC has released a big guide to who they are showing at Glastonbury across 4 channels, iplayer and about 40 radio stations. Guess which act isn't on it?








My mother and aunts talk fondly of their experience of postnatal wards - in ways that my cousins and I are simply bamboozled by. We couldn't get home soon enough. Apparently the generation before us spent a restful week after the birth with endless practical help, getting a full night's sleep whist midwives and maternity assistants fed the baby bottles of formula and changed their nappies all night long if they so desired. But the newborn nurseries that facilitated this have all been removed from nhs maternity units. This was no accident or budgetary restraint. It was a deliberate decision to foist compulsory 24-7 "rooming in" on all mothers with the aim of "supporting breastfeeding and bonding". There is no evidence that it does either. But what it does do is place an unworkable burden on women who have just had babies to assume 24-7 care of their newborn after birth, even when they have experienced complications in their babies birth, emergency surgery or severe birth injury. US based paediatricians have linked this practice to newborn falls and accidental suffocation where dangerously exhausted mothers have dropped or fallen asleep on their newborns. I am not aware that the nhs even monitors such incidents. That is why we must bring back newborn nurseries for any women who decides she wants to use it. It is also why we must not make up stories about 24-7 contact being good for bonding or whatever other nonsense is being fabricated. Women's needs matter in their own right and it is a danger to babies when this is not recognised and taken seriously. That's why @sue_haddon, @catherineroyuk and I penned this letter to @thetimes thetimes.com/article/caf3ee…













