Neonatal care – normal mothering or medical intervention?

For the vast majority of newborn babies, birth and adaptation to extrauterine life happens as a completely normal process that does not require medical attention at all. For them, even the administrative routines of hospital admission are bypassed: they are cared for in 'nurseries' rather than in hospital wards, and they are usually registered together with their mothers (or not at all) in the obstetric service. Unavoidably, perhaps, the normal newborn infant and its mother's mothering ability are frequently virtually ignored and left to the most junior staff, who have almost certainly had inadequate training to deal with difficulties.