Week in hospital for new mums, say parent groups

New mothers should stay in hospital for at least a week after giving birth to learn how to look after their babies properly, parent groups say.

The Parenting Council says 24 hours in a maternity unit is not long enough to establish breastfeeding and teach new mums how to care for their babies.

It has proposed more time in hospital as part of a comprehensive plan for child protection and development which it presented to Health Minister Pete Hodgson.

The rest of the plan almost exactly mirrors proposals presented to ministers by Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro.

Although both plans have been developed over several months, they have become urgent following a national outcry over last month's killings of three-month-old Mangere babies Chris and Cru Kahui.

Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope yesterday welcomed the Parenting Council's proposals and said ministers were "very supportive" of Dr Kiro's plan.

Council head Lesley Max, chief executive of the Great Potentials Foundation (formerly Pacific Foundation), said the council proposed:

* A national information system to ensure that all children received regular health checks and immunisations and were enrolled in schools, unless parents objected to immunisation or chose home schooling.

* Universally available support and guidance for parents.

* "Getting the start right", including childbirth education, adequate time in maternity care, and monitoring attachment between parents and their babies.

* A health promotion strategy including school-based parenting education such as the "Roots of Empathy" programme where mothers bring their babies into primary school classrooms once a month for nine months, helping children learn about how babies feel and how to respond to their feelings.

Mrs Max said research in the Pacific community was producing "frightening" figures on how few pregnant women and their partners attended ante-natal classes.

"When you put that together with being thrown out of maternity care very rapidly before breastfeeding is established, there is so much that we are not doing which, if we did it more sensibly, we'd get better outcomes," she said.

Dr Kiro said the similarity of the Parenting Council's ideas and her own plan gave her confidence that she was on the right track.

The Health Ministry's manager of provider funding, Rose Wall, said midwives or other lead maternity carers were now responsible for preparing pregnant women for birth and supporting them for the baby's first four weeks.

"Breastfeeding takes about four weeks to establish and a busy [hospital] unit is not the best place for this to occur," she said.