“You Are Nervous New Parents.”

“You are nervous new parents.” -Nurse during a hospital tour when asked questions about wanting the baby to room-in.

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There are 10 comments to this post.

Judith had this to say, Dec 24, 2009 @ 5:28 pm (Quote)

please go to birth survey to evaluate this facility after the birth so other expectant parents can know what to expect.

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Knitted in the Womb had this to say, Dec 25, 2009 @ 8:20 am (Quote)

Sooooo….I’m on my 5th baby, she is 14 months old, and I still haven’t spent 24 hrs away from her…what is my reason for being concerned about “rooming in” in this nurse’s mind?

I’ve attended 3 births in the past 6 months at a hospital that seems to have a “routine” practice of taking the baby to the nursery for “observation” for an hour within one hour of the birth (I’d be willing to bet a month’s income that mom would “observe” the baby a lot more closely than the nursery nurses!). But I don’t think they want to admit this is a “routine” practice, so they invent a medical reason to take the baby away each time.

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Jane Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 8:41 am Jane(Quote)

In my case, they told me they had to “warm” the baby up. I said with my third hospital birth, “I’ll put him on me, skin to skin, so my body heat will regulate his. The pediatrician says that’s the best way.”

They looked dumbfounded, then insisted they had to pile me and the baby with heated blankets. Fine, whatever. But he stayed with me.

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Sheva had this to say, Dec 25, 2009 @ 8:55 am (Quote)

I attended a birth where they took the baby away after the bath to put him under a heating lamp. The mother (at my suggestion) asked to hold the baby skin to skin, but the nurse insisted that the heating lamp was superior, and Mom was afraid to argue because they were already mad at her for “not coming in fast enough(?!)” so that she’d had the baby in the car. Their ‘compromise’ was that the heater was in the room. But it was missing the plastic shield, so it just had a naked bulb and the baby’s skin was burning up! I stood there with my hand shielding him, (burning my hand, but I’d rather that!) until they finally let the mother have him back!
I still can’t decide if they’re imbeciles or liars. Probably some of each.

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Jane Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 10:43 am Jane(Quote)

I take it there was no one else in the room you could ask about the heat shield? If so, why not just put the baby back on Mom and turn off the stupid lamp?

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Sheva Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 11:17 am Sheva(Quote)

Well, the reason he had a bath in the first place was because, since he was born in my car, and the Mom hadn’t had enough time to take things off, he was born with a bit of fecal matter on him. When I tried to rinse it off, the nurse saw me and had a rather gigantic hissy fit and insisted on doing it herself, and proceeded to bathe him entirely, instead of just his head, like I was doing. After that, they refused to let me touch him, and she was scared to get off the bed, since she was a VBAC and they had successfully scared her with all their tactics.
I did the best that I could to protect him, but there wasn’t much else I could do without them throwing me out. They had already forbade me from coming into the ward in the first place,(I’d gone to park my car while they brought her up) but I snuck in behind a delivery guy. And she was scared for me to leave until her husband got there, because they were being abusive (they checked her previous uterine scar from THE INSIDE even while she was screaming “stop!”). I wasn’t there at that point. We think that’s why they wouldn’t let me in.

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Lori Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 12:04 pm Lori(Quote)

Please tell me this mother filed a formal complaint with the hospital and the Joint Commisssion.

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Rachel had this to say, Dec 25, 2009 @ 9:59 am (Quote)

Yeah, silly new parents, wanting to take care of their hours old infant themselves instead of handing them off to babysitters!

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Sheva Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 10:07 am Sheva(Quote)

Yeah, silly new parents who want their newborn being cared for by loving, naturally intuitive, naturally protective parents instead of often hateful, often indifferent, and often pointlessly pain-inflicting nurses.

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