I found this study from a post on Spirit Led Birth.
The bonding issue is one near and dear to my heart. With my first four children, ironically it was my c-section babe whom I was able to have in my arms the longest in the crucial first hours after birth. With my other two hospital born babies, the nurses found several reasons to take my children away from me. “We need to warm her up in the nursery” “He is breathing too fast, we have to monitor him.” With my first homebirth baby, the main reason I chose to birth alone at home is because I did not want anyone taking him away from me after the birth. Because of the way things went, I did not get him back in my arms until he was 28 hours old, and we had a very, very difficult time bonding.
The easiest bonding came with my fifth child. Benjamin, born at home after a six hour labor, in my arms the minute he was born and happily carried in a sling the first months of his life. I trained him to take his naps in the sling, nestled in my arms, so I had the freedom to go and do whatever I needed while he napped. Mostly I typed on the computer during these hours – writing various things as I nursed him and he slept.
I wonder if the apostle Pauls prediction that our times would be without natural affection for our children was somehow tied to last days birthing practices? These timely studies seem to indicate something is off in the brains of mothers who opt for surgical birth and that is a sad comment on our world today, where the c-section numbers jump exponentially every year. But I suppose we are collectively birthing armageddon, and that was prophesied too.

Here is some of the text from the article:

“Mothers who push to give birth may be more responsive to the cry of their babies than those mothers who elect to have a caesarean birth, a brain-scanning study suggests.

When U.S. researchers looked at functional MRI brain scans taken up to a month after mothers gave birth and heard their own babies’ cries, they found more activity in areas linked to motivation and emotion among the six who had vaginal deliveries compared with six who had caesarean sections.

“We wondered which brain areas would be less active in parents who delivered by caesarean section, given that this mode of delivery has been associated with decreased maternal behaviours in animal models, and a trend for increased postpartum depression in humans,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. James Swain of the Child Study Centre at Yale University in Connecticut.

“Our results support the theory that variations in delivery conditions such as with caesarean section, which alters the neurohormonal experiences of childbirth, might decrease the responsiveness of the human maternal brain in the early postpartum.”

The differences in brain activity were found in regions that seem to affect how a mother responds to her child and regulate her mood.

Postpartum depression risk

In natural birth, contractions help trigger the release of the hormone oxytocin, which is thought to shape a mother’s behaviour. Hormones are not released in the same way during a caesarean section.

Obstetricians have long known that women who have a caesarean section sometimes have problems bonding with their baby.”

Jenny Hatch

The Natural Family BLOG
The Natural Family Company
“Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!”