The word trauma has only recently been used to describe some women's experiences of birth and breastfeeding, yet childbirth and the postnatal period have long been the most risky stages of female life and - in the past and sadly in some parts of the world today - a matter of life and death. 

While some populations in the modern world no longer fear death as an outcome of birthing or lactation, they face a new threat to their mental health.

Creating a breastfeeding plan and making sure your caregivers inform you how interventions might impact your goals is important. Learning how skin to skin contact and an uninterrupted first hour support breastfeeding establishment will help you decline non-essential interference and separation.

Kangaroo Care (also referred to as Kangaroo Mother Care) has become a familiar sight in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) around the world in recent years. The image of fragile premature babies cradled against the chest of their parents highlights the importance of skin to skin contact and touch in the days and weeks after a baby is born.

Your full-term newborn baby might arrive without a suitcase but she has brought her own packed lunch and water bottle!

Special stores of fat are set aside to support your baby in the very first days of life. This extra energy allows the digestive system time to gently adjust to life outside the womb without the need to process large volumes of milk. Instead, colostrum provides highly concentrated nutrition plus key factors to establish digestion and immune systems.

Babies who have not been exposed to pain relief or other drugs in the maternal bloodstream will respond to being placed uninterrupted against their mothers body with progression through a series of predictable behaviours to bring them to her breast and initiate the first feed. A natural third stage allows the uterus to respond to the oxytocin released in response to her baby’s contact and expel the placenta, at which point the umbilical cord can allow the infant’s blood return to the baby before the cord is cut and the child begins life outside the womb.

And so mammals have reproduced for millennia.

However, the best laid birth plans don’t always go to plan. Many mothers and babies have a different experience. Inductions of labour, interventions such as ventouse delivery or the use of forceps, surgical birth via caesarean … the modern childbirth experience can look very different.

Babies are born with key instincts pre-loaded for immediate use from birth. These reflexes are checked and assessed as part of the APGAR score recorded immediately after birth and a short while later as an indicator of typical development and well-being. These involuntary movements are not controlled but occur in response to stimulation.

The reality is most new mothers are up and about, attending appointments with nurses, lactation consultants, breastfeeding clinics, doctors, physiotherapists and other professionals who used to come to your bedside. There is shopping to be done (smaller onesies after all!), older kids to get to school and meals to prepare. The village network of support has evolved to videos shared on social media and face time when you get a minute.

Imagine being yanked out of your warm and cosy bed on a cold morning, without notice or explanation.

This must be how we all feel in that extraordinary moment we call birth. Confused, overwhelmed and shocked.

Keeping babies close in these early days helps them acclimatise to this strange world of sensory overload. Newborns seek contact and avoid isolation. Your baby cannot explain that the nursery you prepared with such love is an alien space. They cannot tell you that lying on their back in a bassinet is sending panic signals to their brain.

here is no medical reason that weighing a newborn needs to be one of the first things to happen after birth. In fact, there are good reasons to delay the process.

An undisturbed first hour is important for establishing breastfeeding and should only be interrupted for urgent medical care of mother or child. That hour should be considered a minimum period of time and parents should be supported to continue as long as they wish. Where the mother is unable to safely hold her child, her partner should be the only other person to do so for as long as possible, ideally skin-to-skin. All tests and assessments can be done while in this position.

Colostrum is the very first milk your body produces, typically beginning around 16 weeks gestation. While some mothers can express a few drops early on, and others find their breasts leaking in pregnancy, some might only notice a little dried costrum on their nipple and many see none at all before their baby is born: all normal variations and not indicators of milk production or breastfeeding capability.

The time to plan for your 4th trimester is while you are still in the 3rd. There are options you might like to consider for both your birth plan and breastfeeding plan which can help things go more smoothly during the first 12 weeks of the postnatal period.

While things beyond your control will happen during your labour, delivery and hospital stay, researching and discussing options well before your baby arrives means you can approach obstacles knowing you have made informed decisions.

Birth interventions and the medicalisation of natural childbirth last century masked something incredible which had almost been lost in western midwifery memory: babies are born hard-wired to seek the breast and attach with minimal assistance.

The hints were there in the reflexes observed and assessed at birth: the stepping movement of the feet, the rooting reflex, the grasping reflex. Babies delivered onto the belly of their mother can crawl and move their body to the breasts, identify the nipple area, lift and move into position and latch on.

Why we are surprised by this, when we observe similar behaviour in other mammals shows how distanced we are from our biological normal.