Postpartum care for mothers in the U.K. & USA (formal & informal) is dire

[Crewcut]

I live in the USA but am a Brit who moved here at 26. I gave birth to three children here. My birthing experiences were all good and the hospital was very impressive in how they educated us on how to prepare for, and what to expect at birth and breastfeeding, with classes for months before the birth. They had a dedicated breastfeeding unit in the hospital that you could visit at any time for active support from lactation nurses that meant I successfully breastfeed all my kids.

However in the USA there is no federally mandated paid maternity leave and if you don’t have family or friends willing to help, there is no help whatsoever during the postpartum period. My husband earned enough so that I could stay at home full time but many women are forced to return to work within weeks or even days and put their baby in daycare to survive.

Of course, paid maternity leave is available in the U.K. but is this enough support immediately after birth?

Understanding of the mother’s need for care and support as she recovers from childbirth and what is happening to her mind and body at this time is lacking in both the USA and U.K. My mother died when I was 13 and so I had no emotional support or advice from anyone, I had to rely on books, websites and my own instincts and common sense to care for my babies. My in-laws lived 12 hours away by car (two states away).

There is a new business startup in the USA that offers the meals that many Asian societies make sure mothers have after birth with vital nutrition needed for recovery. Some Asian countries also have hotels where mothers can stay for the first 40 days after birth with their baby while other women look after them, or the community provides the help. Is this is the kind of service that should be offered by the state when you think of the FREE labour women are giving to society by being pregnant for 9 months, giving birth, breastfeeding and caring for the next generation? I think both the U.K. & USA could be doing A LOT more to actively care for new mothers to aid their recovery and help prevent postpartum depression and anxiety. New mothers often find themselves completely isolated and with no social support around them.

www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/03/chiyo-postpartum-meal-service-entrepreneurs

YABU - this is unnecessary women currently do fine without extra support

YANBU - women in the U.K. & USA lack community & state/formal support during the postpartum period.

Can't believe so many people have disagreed with you, OP. Postnatal care in this country is atrocious.

Oh, please. You didn't have a baby for the good of society, you had one because you wanted one. But if it really was for the good of society, give it to someone who knows how to bring it up so they don't need to claim money for help, and you get back to work.

Meanwhile the UK birth rate is 1.56....

And the world birthday is 17.5.
And world's population is 8 billion. And forecast to grow to 10 billion in 30 years.

Don't be a martyr and have a baby unless you're doing it for yourself.

@Crewcut

Your post was a rather bald and exaggerated take on the situation.

Most American mothers are not in your position, with only out of state in laws as support. I was in that position myself. It's very unusual.

Most American women will have friends or family available to lend a hand. Many local organisations like parishes, synagogue organisations, etc. have groups who do meals on a rota for families with a new baby or if someone has cancer, broken leg, etc. You can order groceries and meals. Neighbours appear bearing casseroles and offering help. America tends to be a good deal more of a roll up your sleeves and barge in to help society than the UK is.

Daycares take babies from age 6 weeks. It's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination to have to return to work so soon. However, for some women it's a badge of honour to get back to work as soon as they can. For some, there is much more mat leave available and they take it all, often tacking on annual leave, or if teaching, timing birth to give them mat leave plus the long summer vacation off. Mat leave is a matter left to individual employers and to state law. It's not a federal matter.

YANBU.

@Crewcut “It’s a very weird take @Testina to say women have children for “selfish” reasons. Children aren’t a luxury, private hobby. A society collapses without children constantly being born.”

Not weird at all.
I don’t disagree that without enough children, our society would end.
But tell me, honestly - did you choose to have a child to prevent that collapse?
Or because you wanted one?
It might collectibility perpetuate our society as a by product, but individually the decision to have a child is very much a selfish one, and a private hobby.

Op, are by any change deeply religious?

Is it a religious position to think children are not commodities and that supporting new mothers is a sign of a healthy and functioning society?

I feel like the OP is getting some poster’s backs up and so they are being wilfully obtuse in response to that. Postnatal care in the uk is obviously incredibly sub par, no idea why so many people are trying to deny that.
Or maybe they haven’t had a baby in the last few years.

In the UK women usually take at least 6 months off before returning to work out of the home. More often 9 months or a year. Everyone gets 6 weeks on full pay followed by 8 months on £600 a month. You can also get state benefits if you have no other household money coming in.
There's no particular emphasis on getting back to work asap. Those who do are usually better off, as those on low wages can't afford childcare. Lots of poorer people stay off work until their children get to 3 or school age.
Usually your husband would provide food for the first week or so, they get 2 weeks on full pay here. After that most women are able to cook .
Also we have daily midwife visits for as long as needed, and after that you can get health visitor support, usually minimal but the service is free for those who do need more support, they will visit your home weekly or as required.

So yes then.

Postnatal care in hospital is terrible but that isn't what the post is about, is it? She's talking about being expected to return to work and what happens when you get home after hospital. I don't recognise the emphasis on returning to work after the birth. It's not a thing in the UK. We have fairly generous universal maternity benefits. And very expensive childcare. Presumably nannies in the US are considerably cheaper. You'd have to be in the top 15% of earners to afford one FT in the UK. A nursery costs about the same as you can earn minimum wage.

when you think of the FREE labour women are giving to society by being pregnant for 9 months, giving birth, breastfeeding and caring for the next generation?

As a childless woman who is expected to (and prepared to) pay her own way for life... I don't get what part of you having a child represents giving free labour. Can you explain?

You're not wrong that postpartum care is bad. I was referred to the perinatal mental health service when DD2 was 5 days old. I experienced suicidal thoughts and very real plans to end my life over the months that followed. The perinatal team referred me to the psychologist on the team, who only starts seeing women before their baby turns 1. DD2 is 10 months and I've been told it's pretty much certain I'll drop off the waiting list (because DD will turn 1) before I see anyone. When I spoke to the GP about my suicidal thoughts he said I should get more sleep - he didn't understand why I wasn't getting more sleep, since surely the baby only woke every 3 hours to feed, and I could sleep in between?

But I'm not sure OP's suggestion of a hotel for mothers would have helped. I think it would have been hell and pushed me over the edge, but maybe that's because I'm envisaging some sort of postnatal ward for 40 days 😱

I view your ‘who else would populate the next generation?!’ argument the same way as I view ‘puppy farms shouldn’t be banned because where else would the next generation of pet dogs come from?’: A simplistic and underdeveloped argument.

there will NEVER be a shortage of babies for the same reasons there will never be shortage of puppies. the intentional breeding of puppies AND humans mean we can’t sustain the current numbers, never mind the future numbers.

But good try at pretending you’ve selflessly had kids for the value of planet earth rather than your own narrow desires 🤣

To my mind, your post is back to front. Not everything can or should be viewed through the lens of money and economics.

You yourself, OP, refer to pregnancy and childbirth etc as “labour”. You can’t then say children aren’t commodities.

People have children not as units of economic productivity. They have them because they’re humans, and that’s what humans do. Post partum provisions for women should have no link to return to work, food delivery start ups, hotels to stay in at cost. They should be rooted in cultural attitudes towards what’s best for society and the women and babies in question (basically, society). This is knowledge that has been gathered and experience acquired since, well, the beginning of humankind. 40 days of confinement (not actually imprisonment as a PP suggested, IRL) achieves this for some eastern cultures. In Western Europe post partum care (in the form of rest and time and paid leave and some healthcare) has been largely outsourced to govt in the, but culture still dictates that women and their babies need to be together at home.

The USA (where I live and had children) is a disgracefully backwards nation in this regard in that it chooses, when it has the means not to, to have a national baseline of sending women back to being units of economic output very quickly after childbirth. On the whole, the country doesn’t exist on a subsistence basis for the majority, and for those who are living on a subsistence basis it’s because of a larger federal choice for that to be the case. We’re not talking rural Angola here.

The solution is not to paper over this baseline deficiency with food delivery services and whatnot. It’s to recognise that there’s more to life as a human than making money. The USA will ultimately reap what it sows wrt this deliberate blind spot. It’s already is, somewhat, with only the wealthy being able to be regular humans, everyone else cattle.

You are literally using your body to grow a unique human being and then feed it, I don’t get what part of that is not free labour? How are we going to have new humans otherwise? Pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and recovery take time, resources and energy. Children who are raised for 18 years + by those who have children will then be available for you to employ for your business or in the multitude of jobs that are vital to run a society and keep the older population healthy and cared for.

I am amazed at the amount of women who don’t seem to see what a significant contribution this is for the whole of society. We all can only physically work a certain amount of time (and can hopefully retire) and then younger adults come into the workforce and they all come from somewhere.

Women are often out of the paid workforce for years raising, caring for and teaching small, growing, vulnerable babies and children. So while society benefits from the children mothers grow and raise they instead can take a financial hit.

@Partyandbullshit I agree with your points. My descriptions of what and how other cultures care for postpartum mothers don’t necessarily need to be copied, but the point is that they are doing something for postpartum mothers. The fact that we don’t and many on this thread are openly hostile to the idea shows how little we value mothers and what it takes to grow a baby, bring them into the world and the physical and mental toll it can take on the woman, as much as she loves and wants her baby.

@TrixiesPillboxHat I never made that statement, babies are desired by their mothers but not because they are a luxury hobby that they do on the side of the really important work in life.

You are missing the point, which is that those women who decide to become mothers should be cared for immediately after birth. The scorn some women on here are treating mothers who are newly postpartum is quite frankly sad.

I have known brand new mothers, or mothers on their second or further child to receive subpar medical and mental health support in the USA & the U.K. during their recovery from birth and they apparently won’t be getting any emotional empathy from some of the women here either.

@WeWereInParis I am very sorry to hear you are struggling to receive help.

There are a lot of convoluted points being made here.

There is undoubtedly an issue with the population structure the UK is facing. We can’t fund the pensions or elderly services we are going to need.

There are two ways to fix it:

• migration
• increasing birth rate

Brexiteers made it clear that migration isn’t an option. We are now a hostile country to economic migrants.
We need to increase the birth rate. But the way to do this isn’t to shack mothers up In hotels with food packages.
We need to look in the long term. People aren’t opting out of parenthood because they might have a rough postnatal period. They are opting out because childcare is so expensive, and the majority of childcare falls on the shoulders of the mother.
Reducing childcare costs isn’t the answer either. Instead they need to raise UC for working parents to make it financially viable for people to have children at a younger age. We need to have more than two week paternity leave. We need to encourage men to reduce their working hours to allow both partners to continue to earn.
That being said, I don’t think we can claim that having children is some altruistic thing that people do to help the British economy; because it’s not. People have children for selfish reasons and there is a side benefit of it providing a side benefit to society.
So although I know my children will hopefully contribute to helping my generation retire; I had them because I thought I’d make cute babies and I kinda wanted the snugs. And that’s okay.
Ultimately, even those who do claim to have babies for selfless reasons; on a worldwide scale are being selfish. Because as much as our small dot on the planet is suffering from a falling birth rate; our planet is still overpopulated.

You are literally using your body to grow a unique human being and then feed it, I don’t get what part of that is not free labour? How are we going to have new humans otherwise? Pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and recovery take time, resources and energy. Children who are raised for 18 years + by those who have children will then be available for you to employ for your business or in the multitude of jobs that are vital to run a society and keep the older population healthy and cared for.

If it's such a drag for you to give birth and look after a child, why on earth are you having one? Don't do it for the country. Lol. No one except your family cares if you have one or not. There'll always be a next generation because peoole genuinely want the joy of having children. You don't need to burden yourself with one as a, favour to society. 😆

I am in the UK and have had 2 children in the last 4 years. My experience of short term postnatal care (first week or so) was reasonable, with quite a lot of visits and support from midwife and health visitor teams (both at home and locally).

However I do think the longer term postnatal care for women in terms of looking after their postnatal physical health really needs to be improved. I know a lot of women with serious postnatal issues such as prolapses and severe incontinence who have really struggled to get tye medical support/advice/treatment they need, and who've been quite 'fobbed off' by their GP etc.
I doubt it will happen anytime soon due to the state of the NHS but I really think we would benefit from a system like they have in France where new mothers have access to a postnatal physio programme etc.

I think there's a balance to be struck between the current really subpar UK offering and being fussed over for weeks and weeks. All too often on the parenting board we hear from parents at their limit, ill with sleep deprivation, in that moment regretting having their babies all for want of someone to take the baby for a few hours so they can rest. It's not healthy for parents or for babies.

In my opinion, the thing that would make a major difference would be longer and better-paid paternity leave. With both my babies I dreaded DH returning to work because it meant an end to regular reliable breaks. It meant being alone in the day and having to do most of the work at night because DH did need at least 6-ish hours' sleep to not lose his job.

There are other things that could theoretically be done but allowing fathers to actually be fully engaged parents and not separate them from their babies after two weeks would be relatively simple to implement and do a huge amount of good.

Also, I agree with OP's stance that children are vital to the public good and people shouldn't be dissuaded from having them by shit care. Of course on an individual level having a child is a choice made mostly selfishly, but the fact remains that society needs people to make that choice and shouldn't be putting would-be parents off.

And I'm not religious. I'm an atheist. That was such an odd question.