Excellent article from German-speaking Switzerland.
Mobile phones in the delivery room
by
Carmen Roshard, Redaktorin Zurich,
tagesanzeiger.ch, 1st June 2017
The overburdening use of the smartphone at the time of birth gets increasingly stressful. Experts warn about the consequences for the development of newborns.
The woman is in labor, the child is coming soon, in the baby's room everything is ready for the reception of the new baby. Also the smartphone. When it starts, one thinks one is part of a documentary film, the expectant father filming from all sides, standing in the way, so that the midwife can hardly do her work. When the child is born, the mother's
mobile phone will soon be activated. For half of the new mothers, says an experienced midwife, the smartphone comes into play after only ten to fifteen minutes.
The phenomenon is widespread to an increasing extent in every birth department. Experts are worried, also at the women's clinic of the Triemlispital. "We encounter the problem every day and gave the team a reason to discuss it," says Gabriella Stocker, deputy head physician of the women's clinic. "Parents often take a photo of the child after birth, before they even look at it," she says. The first contact with the child is thereby disturbed. In mothers' wards, the mothers are also more likely to look at the hand-held display instead of the newborn child. That is why a lunch break was introduced at the mother's child station in the women's ward of the hospital. No visits, no medically or urgently necessary measures to disturb the mother-child relationship. A media-free window should also be established and recommended. "We're trying to sensitize women," says Stocker.