“The modern maternity organization currently provides for the joint management of mother and child, the so-called rooming-in, which must be proposed by providing the necessary practical and psychological support to the new family”. An “individualized and empathic” support. And “the national shortage of healthcare personnel, heavily suffered also in the area of the birth process, is not a sufficient reason to hypothesize convoluted and lower quality assistance proposals such as the separate management of mother and child”. This is the message launched by experts in the maternal and child area: gynecologists, obstetricians, neonatologists, paediatricians.
In a joint note, the specialists address a reflection after the case of the newborn found dead at the Pertini hospital in Rome in the bed where his mother had nursed him and had fallen asleep. “A tragic episode” which becomes “an opportunity to share some considerations on the health care provided in maternity hospitals”, highlight the experts of the scientific societies Sin (Italian Society of Neonatology), Sip (Italian Society of Pediatrics), Sigo (Italian Society of Gynecology and obstetrics) and Aogoi (Association of Italian hospital obstetricians and gynecologists), who explain that they have “for some time been committed to promoting the mother-child relationship and breastfeeding, long-lasting investments with positive social-health implications”.
“The separate management of mother and newborn, prevalent in past eras, instead hinders the start of the parent-family-newborn relationship, is contrary to physiology, even of breastfeeding, and does not guarantee against unexpected and tragic neonatal events – they warn – Let’s do reference in particular to the ‘post-natal collapse’, known as Supc (Sudden Unexpected Postnatal Collapse), a sudden and unexpected event, very rare (affecting 8 newborns every 100,000), but documented internationally.It occurs in the first week of life, at sometimes due to undiagnosed underlying pathologies, but most often in apparently healthy children. The current indications of scientific societies to prevent it are based on the elimination, as far as possible, of the associated risk factors”.
Another aspect that experts are keen to point out is that “sharing a bed between an alert mother and a healthy newborn, placed in a safe position, is a natural, practical, indisputable fact. However, scientific societies currently recommend avoiding condition of co-sleeping, judged unsafe, suggesting placing the baby in its own cradle at the end of the feed, especially when there are no other caregivers (family members or health professionals).This prudence is justified well beyond the stay of mother and baby in the Birth point and affects all the first 6 months of life”.
However, it is “inevitable that, despite all the precautions, mother and child can spontaneously fall asleep in the same bed. Rather than being dramatized, it is an event that requires reinforcement of information to families on the safety of the child during sleep”.
In conclusion, Sin, Sip and Sigo-Aogoi “underline the essential value of the rooming-in practice – reads the joint note signed by the presidents Luigi Orfeo, Annamaria Staiano, Nicola Colacurci and Antonio Chiàntera – recommend that the implementation of rooming- in order to be appropriate requires that families are adequately informed, involved and supported; and that health professionals offer as much individualized and empathetic assistance as possible so that the institutional indication to practice rooming-in is appropriately declined” .