More than one in 10 women struggle to bond with their baby, with the majority saying they are given no support from healthcare staff, a survey has found.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of women said they received no information or advice on bonding with their baby in the first few weeks after birth, despite guidance for doctors and nurses recommending that they assist with emotional attachment to encourage healthy child development.
The respondents said societal pressure to enjoy pregnancy, and assumptions that bonding would happen automatically, left them feeling guilty and afraid when it didn’t, according to a survey of more than 1,000 mothers, undertaken by the Parent-Infant Foundation.
Factors that can affect bonding during pregnancy include the mother’s physical and mental health and past trauma, such as baby loss.
Tamora Langley, head of policy at the Parent-Infant Foundation, said: “We understand staff are under huge time pressures, but checking on emotional wellbeing as well as physical wellbeing needs to become the norm.
“With training, a wider range of professionals and practitioners should be able to have conversations about emotional attachment and bonding. Parents who are struggling may need specialist parent-infant relationship support, but they can only get that if they are confident to speak up in the first place. We must challenge the myth of the ‘perfect parent’, so that pregnant women feel able to ask for help when they need it.”
The Royal College of Midwives chief executive, Gill Walton, said staff shortages meant midwives often did not have time to help with bonding. She called for a national strategy to recruit and train more midwives so that “these vital areas of care become the norm”.
One woman in the survey said that despite having a number of pregnancy losses before a healthy pregnancy, “no one seemed to understand or even mention that it might be hard to think about building a relationship with our baby in case the worst happened again”.
Another said: “I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t instantly love my son, and everyone else says things like ‘it’s the most magical time giving birth’.”
The survey found that 71% of respondents would have liked more support during pregnancy to bond with their baby, while 64% said nobody talked to them about bonding during their antenatal care.
Andrew Whitelaw, an emeritus professor of neonatal medicine at the University of Bristol, said a growing focus on identifying psychiatric problems in mothers, since suicide is the most common cause of maternal mortality in the UK, meant that midwives “do not want to increase anxiety before delivery by talking up difficulties with bonding”.
Rather than discussing potential challenges with bonding before birth, one of the most effective ways of encouraging bonding was personal contact, including putting the baby skin-to-skin naked between the mothers’ breasts for an hour or so after delivery, he said.
An NHS spokesperson said: “We encourage services to keep up to date with the latest Nice guidance so they can provide the best level of care to women and their babies. Our recently announced delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services sets out commitments to provide personalised care and support plans, which can include advice on baby bonding.”
