Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Dec
24
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“It Is Illegal For Us To Leave A Baby Unwashed…”
‘It is illegal for us to leave a baby unwashed…he could rot, I have seen it happen.” -L&D Nurse to a mother who’s cesarean was delayed over her refusal to consent to a newborn bath prior to establishing breastfeeding.
There are 24 comments to this post.
That is funny. I didn’t wash my baby (who had a hospital birth) for over 36 hours after birth and she didn’t rot.
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Um, lady? Could you cite this statute for me? Run over to the computer and print it out for me. Then I’ll hand over my baby and consent to a bath. Oh! And while you’re at it, please provide an abstract or the “rotting-babies-bath-deprivation” study. Because we all know you’re about evidence-based practice. Thank you so kindly.
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Yeah, Baby-Rot is the leading cause of death in 55 countries worldwide.
(I got a LOT of flack from the nurses with Kiddo#3 because I didn’t let them bathe him for about 24 hours. I’d just pop him on when they came in, and they wouldn’t take him if he was nursing, so I didn’t have to fight.)
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I’m an OB nurse who never bathes babies prior to establishing breastfeeding (and I’ve even *gasp* “let” babies go home unwashed). I’ve never had a baby rot on me. The insanity around “the magical bath” never ceases to amaze me. Let that vernix absorb and the baby have her energy to nurse! I’m ranting now, but I really think this routine bathing in the hospital stuff is nonsense, and I get annoyed even having to participate in it. Furthermore, moronic nurses like this one make us all look bad.
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Nikki Reply:
December 24th, 2009 at 7:44 am (Quote)
:::APPLAUSE::: We are so glad you are out there, Melissa! Hopefully nurses like you will start to turn the tide and be the norm instead of an exception.
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Jane Reply:
December 24th, 2009 at 8:07 am (Quote)
But isn’t the governing precept of obstetrics that the baby is clean and the mother is dirty? Hence the shaving, the way they used to prevent the mom from touching the baby’s head? Once the baby comes through the birth canal, the baby is now himself unclean and must be purified. It’s part of the ritual of giving birth in the hospital.
Since there’s no reason for it in the first place, nurses such as this who have their backs to the wall will make up a reason because they can’t very well say, “It’s a ritual we use in order to establish that the baby is the hospital’s property rather than yours.”
Thank you for being a good nurse and bucking the trend. 
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Lovley Labor RN Reply:
December 24th, 2009 at 9:49 am (Quote)
Seriously? I totally agree with you Melissa, Nurses like this make the rest of us look bad. The hospital “corporation” that I work for (Which I love btw) has been moving toward more evidence based parctice in the last several years, which I am excited to say has been a huge success with the moms that deliver with us. Of course we get a lot of push back from some of the MD’s but it has been a wonderful change to see that hospitals actualy “can” change to evidence based practice. I love that we do immediate skin to skin, we don’t separate moms from babies EVER, unless there is a problem etc etc. If a mom doesn’t want her baby washed, more power to her! That vernix is awesome stuff! Let is soak in, it is there for a reason! It makes the BEST lotion too
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i had my third baby in germany and they WON’T wash the baby at all at the hospital! i asked if they were going to bathe her cause that was always the norm in the states and i didn’t really know better. they told me it was better for the baby to NOT be washed and it was better for their skin. sometimes i really miss living in europe where they don’t flip out over the most assinine things…
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Labor Nurse, CNM had this to say,
Dec 24, 2009 @ 11:15 am (Quote)
LOL! Really? This one made me just laugh, it’s so ridiculous!
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You know what really bothers me most about this? This statement wasn’t born of ignorance or a desireto help. It was an outright lie. There is no such thing as a law stating a baby must be bathed. There is no such thing as Baby Rot, and this nurse has never seen it. That’s three lies in one sentence, and over NOTHING. Over NOTHING at all! And they delayed surgery because she didn’t believe their lies?
I have to ask why the stupid bath was so important to them that they’d risk the birth itself, the time, the surgeon’s time, the anesthesiologist’s time, and their integrity.
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Give me a break! This is right up there with the one I heard at the last hospital birth I did labor support at–if you decline the eye antibiotic we will have to report you to children’s services because WE will be fined by the state if we do not administer the medication. They didn’t appreciate my input when I informed them that I thought they could risk it because amazingly I have been a midwife for over 22 years and the state has NEVER fined me for following simple informed consent regarding proceedures such as this.
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Doula Sara had this to say,
Jan 3, 2010 @ 8:47 pm (Quote)
Oh my goodness! This made me laugh hysterically for 2 minutes non-stop! It is ridiculously absurd and outright hilarious!
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Well, hold on a minute. We had a baby in a birth center about three years ago, didn’t bathe her for about a month and now she’s totally rotten! And super-cute to boot…darn it, guess we should have washed off all that icky vernix…well, live and learn…
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cottonlily had this to say,
Sep 10, 2011 @ 3:24 pm (Quote)
This is something really sad about hospital births. My sister had her first (only) son in the hospital and I had to film his first bath. He was taken to the plastic box under the fry lamp, naked and screaming, given eye drops, heel prick and vit k injection, bathed, FED and dressed before they brought him back some time later. She couldn’t even see any of this because the box was in far corner of the room and nurse stood in the way. It was so robotic.
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Add Your Comment.
This is just plain ignorance on the part of the L&D nurse. Why are we entrusting these IMBECILES with ourselves and our babies?
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