Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Sep
26
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…If You Wanted To Stay In The Hospital Longer, You Should Have Had A Cesarean…”
“Well, if you wanted to stay in hospital longer, you should have had a cesarean section!” – NICU nurse to mother who was sad to be discharged while baby was still in the NICU after birth. Mother lived quite a distance away from the hospital.
There are 36 comments to this post.
Samantha had this to say,
Sep 26, 2011 @ 6:37 pm (Quote)
What an insensitive thing to say to a new mother who has to leave her baby. Do some of these people even think before opening their mouth or going even further, put themselves in that position? Ugh. Makes me want to punch this nurse!
I’m sorry OP.
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There are some people who just should not be allowed on the same floor of the hospital as the NICU.
I had one of those, she was bad enough that more than one family specifically refused to have her care for their babies.
When a parent is dealing with a situation where their baby is in critical condition, they are scared, sad, worried, and quite often dealing with postpartum hormones on top of all the rest. The last thing they need is Nurse Nasty taking out her career frustrations on the families!
I know it’s hard to think clearly “in the moment” but I hope this nurse was reported and got some training in professional behavior towards patients’ family members.
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first time mommy had this to say,
Sep 26, 2011 @ 7:13 pm (Quote)
But then I would’ve been bed ridden with a cath shoved up my doohickey and you would’ve taken my baby away from me, not allowed me to initiate breastfeeding and bond, given my baby formula without my consent bc my baby is starving and then when I protested and made it clear I want to BF you would’ve told me if I don’t get at least 5 hours of consecutive rest, I would not succeed. Oh and then you would’ve woken me up every hour for “necessary tests”.
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Do you know what really gets me here? If a small baby is admitted to hospital where I live, then a parent MUST stay with it to care for it in a parental type of way. eg feeding, bathing, dressing, comforting. The nurses all say “We are not here to do childcare, we do nursing.” They have a pull-out couch for me to sleep on, and a parent bathroom, shower, kitchen and laundry. Babies who have left the hospital don’t get readmitted to the NICU, they go to the PICU or peadeatric ward.
So, why is a newborn different to a two week old. You MAKE me stay for my two week old but won’t LET me stay with my newborn.
Fine, then why is the NICU different.
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first time mommy Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 7:26 pm (Quote)
VERY good point! When DS was 8 months he was admitted to hospital for a choking incident they insisted that at least one of us stay the night with him – not that we wouldn’t have!
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road2vba2c had this to say,
Sep 26, 2011 @ 7:42 pm (Quote)
Let’s try that again, nursie poo. “I can’t imagine your pain. Here’s the number and address for the Ronald McDonald House near here.”
(*I know not all NICUs have RMH near them, but a lot do, or at least have similar options. SOMETHING has to be available.)
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Silly me, I thought since I didn’t *need* major surgery I would pass. However now that it seems I *do* need surgery if I want to stay near my child… I’m not currently using my appendix, gal bladder or my tonsils. You may have them all if I get to stay and be her mother.
I will say though that kidnapping has really changed since the good ole days where you *just* charge a ransom. Now you want to charge for my child to be held by you *and* put me through unnecessary pain while making me pay for *that* as well. Devious.
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I’m sure the last thing this mom wanted to do was to stay in the HOSPITAL. It’s not like she wanted to stay there having bp readings taken in the middle of the night, nurses and drs walking int oher room at all hours and never getting any sleep. She wanted to be near her BABY, not stuck in a hospital bed in severe pain at the mercy of overworked nurses.
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First time around I refused to be discharged and one day when I was in the NNU they sent another NNU mum to tell me my meds were on my bed – along with all my stuff, my flowers and balloons were thrown. I had lasted two weeks but two days later I was back in the Transitional Care ward.
Second time around they tried to get rid of me and I said no we were only waiting for a TC bed. Born on Friday by crash CS, TC on Monday – so not exactly in that long for a crash!
This time around I held on for 6 days, refused to leave so the TC manager (who knows me by now!) came to see me and offered me a hospital flat, I was there for three days before going to TC for four weeks!
I don’t get how they could keep me in hospital for a month for “reassurance” because I’ve lost a premature baby and all my babies were prem. They kept me in indefinitely this time because I had an irritable uterus and they were concerned I’d either yo-yo or miss the real thing. They can keep me in TC for 4 weeks (which I know were for fake reasons and that’s another story) but they argue about keeping you in with your baby a couple more days whilst you wait for a TC bed.
And as someone else said, any other ward and you wouldn’t be allowed to leave.
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In the States, you get one more day in the hospital for a c-section than for a vaginal delivery.
Is this nurse implying that the baby will be out of the hospital in one more day? If not, the nurse doesn’t even make sense by her own standards.
BTW, I did have to leave the hospital without my baby. I lived two miles from the hospital. It was still wrenching and I was able to visit him four times a day. The mom didn’t want a spa vacation; she wanted to bring home her baby.
I hope the mom reported this nurse right up the chain of command and asked her doctor why this nurse was criticizing the doctor’s medical decisions, since the nurse in effect said the doctor should have sectioned the mom — many doctors would hear that as nurses telling the patients they have a potential medical malpractice lawsuit on their hands.
The hospital might brush the nurse’s comments under the carpet if they’re just hurtful, but if they begin to think she’s opening them up to a lawsuits, I bet they’d retrain her in appropriate things to say to a patient.
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I don’t understand this, granted when I was recovering it was from an EC/S but I stayed a day later and my child wasn’t even in NICU. I just felt like I needed one more day for emotional and physical reasons. It isn’t like they are not getting paid….well maybe if she was self pay but I doubt that.
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Laura Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 6:57 am (Quote)
When my son was born, he didn’t go to NICU – but he did need monitoring for high white blood cell count / antibiotic effectiveness (which wasn’t needed, was explicable by other things, and was fine, but whatever) for an extra 12 hours. I was discharged, he was kept, and they had me sleep in his room (which was our room; they never moved us) as he needed his parent.
HTH is that different if he is a NICU baby (other than obviously I wouldn’t be sleeping in the NICU)? Ridiculous.
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Lindsey had this to say,
Sep 27, 2011 @ 6:34 am (Quote)
When our son was in the NICU my OB kept me admitted until the day he was discharged. The NICU staff were horrible but he insisted that I still be in hospital as long as he was (we lived 1.5hrs away).
In Ontario you are allowed to stay in hospital for 5 days after you are discharged from care if you do not feel ready to go home yet (although OHIP will no longer cover your stay).
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Mama Wrench had this to say,
Sep 27, 2011 @ 6:53 am (Quote)
At my hospital moms aren’t ALLOWED to leave without their babies. If that meant a month of NICU care, so be it, it’s still cheaper than more nurses to do routine baby care that the parents can do on their own!
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Rebecca Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 9:57 am (Quote)
Our baby didn’t get a room. They kept her in the newborn nursery for a full week (she needed IV antibiotics) and I was allowed to visit whenever I wanted since I was breastfeeding. FF moms could only visit during visiting hours. Even so they were surprised when we were up there for two hours at a time four times a day (bringing pumped milk) The nursing staff did tell my husband and I that if they found out I was staying up at the hospital, they would deny access to they baby. We live fifteen minutes away from the hospital, so we caved.
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Rosemary Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 4:03 am (Quote)
WTF? They would “deny access”. I would have been on the phone to the police in 2 seconds flat if ANYONE had denied me access to my baby while he was in the nursery / NICU.
Do these people even hear themselves and how brutal they are sometimes.
I’m sorry Rebecca.
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Mom of One had this to say,
Sep 27, 2011 @ 8:38 am (Quote)
I was discharged (with my daughter) 30 hours after my unplanned c-section. So, you do not always stay very long after a c-section (not that I wanted to stay, I couldn’t wait to leave!)
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Since I can’t drive, this would have been a nightmare for me. Not that I would have left, even if discharged. Thankfully, in my state, they can’t legally stop a mom from being with her baby unless she’s (and now, everyone she has to help her are) proven a danger to the baby. But because of posts like this, I asked around as to what hospital to go to if I went into premature labor this pregnancy and felt better knowing. I’m 34 weeks, 3 days now, so chances of needing it are pretty slim at this point, but this kind of thing still scares the daylights out of me 
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Jane Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 10:29 am (Quote)
My full-term baby was admitted to NICU for a few days because he developed a staph infection in his eye. NICU isn’t just for prematurity, so it’s good to ask those questions even if you’re at-term.
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Kat Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 10:54 am (Quote)
My full term (38 weeks) baby was admitted to the NICU for several days due to distress he experienced during his birth. We did end up being discharged the same day, thankfully.
It was hard enough having a baby in the NICU, having to leave him there would have been emotionally devastating since the last baby we had to leave in the NICU never came home. Even rationally knowing things were different this time would not make it less emotionally draining to go home without him!
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Heather Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 2:31 pm (Quote)
Very true, but transferring after birth will give me fewer choices, this being an out of hospital birth, So if there’s a transfer, it will be in an emergency and I won’t have as much time, so I might not be able to go to the best option.
I don’t even have a lot of unreasonable demands–I want to be with my baby and want to breastfeed on cue and it’s frustrating that there’s only one hospital that will guarantee both
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This is mine. I was doing temp work in the hospital NICU when I heard one of the nurses say this to a mom who was distressed because she’d been told she had to go home and she lived 2 hours away plus didnt drive. The irony is that a csection would only have been one day extra hospital admission and baby was critical on a ventilator so not going to be going anywhere. I had a huge falling out with the nurse over her callousness and spoke to the paediatrician looking after the child who arranged for accommodation for the mother, but I no longer do any temp work at that hospital because that was not the only heartless rubbish I was exposed to in the 2 days I was there:(
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Jane Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 10:30 am (Quote)
Wow. Two days and you were exposed to that much heinousness? I’m so sorry, but I’m glad for that mom that you stood up for her.
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Claudia Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 11:21 am (Quote)
You have no idea:) This hospital fed quite a low socio-economic area, other winning statements included: Oh we dont encourage breastfeeding because most of our moms are poor and arent really interested (when I asked why all babies were getting bottles), Oh hes crying because hes hungry, but its not feeding time yet and the winner was the head neonatal nurse saying that breastfeeding was over rated. At least all of these were said out of the earshot of new moms!
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first time mommy Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 2:47 pm (Quote)
O_O ? Formula feed b/c you’re poor?! WTF. Yes, I know there’s WIC but they only give you so much and I can see how a mom would be tempted to stretch the formula by mixing more water Crying b/c hungry but not feeding time?! All right, nurse, when you get hungry (and are able to eat) how about you don’t eat b/c it’s “not time yet” ?
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The stupidity of this statement is astounding. The nurse is telling a mother that if she wants to spend time with her very ill newborn, she should have opted for unnecessary major surgery. I guess since she had THE NERVE to birth without a scalpel, she deserves to be kept away from her child, right?
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Ash had this to say,
Sep 28, 2011 @ 4:49 pm (Quote)
It is horrible how they are still keeping nicu babies and parents apart. I was discharged while my 37 weeker was still in the nicu despite having dangerously high bp. When I went for my follow up the next day my OB couldn’t believe they discharged me and wanted to readmit me, but yep I was still out after the two day period. It has got to change. I will never leave another babe alone in the hospital after the experience I had (lots of things were done behind our back when we went home to sleep, including starting bottle feeding despite being told we wanted to bf) even if it means sleeping on the floor or chair.
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Add Your Comment.
Even our modestly sized hospital has emergency beds for NICU moms. They could have made it work, especially onsidering the benefits of mother-child bonding time…oh and how about some congratulations for getting through the hard work of labor withOUT a Cesarean. Stupid people!!
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Toni Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 6:41 am Toni(Quote)
This! Even the small(ish) community hospital nearest me has rooms adjacent to the NICU that mothers and/or fathers can stay in after the mother has been discharged, if the baby has not. They even provide a “community” kitchen and laundry service. What kind of hospital doesn’t provide those things nowadays??!!
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Lisa Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 6:56 am Lisa(Quote)
Uh, Mayo Clinic? Their NICU isn’t even in the same hospital as the maternity ward. Once I was discharged I luckily got a room at the Ronald McDonald house, otherwise I would have been SOL. No parent rooms, no private rooms, the closest you get is a “prep” room where you’re in charge of the baby for 24 hours before they let you take the baby home.
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Toni Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 8:23 am Toni(Quote)
Sorry. I wasn’t saying it as in, hospitals that don’t offer that don’t exist (I am certain they do, unfortuantely); it was more a level of incredulity that they can still get away with it…. didn’t mean to offend.
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Lisa Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 9:04 am Lisa(Quote)
No no no, you didn’t offend – I was trying to convey incredulity too, that the high and mighty Mayo Clinic, one of the best hospitals in the nation, where celebrities and presidents go for their care, has such crappy NICU accommodations. Yet some podunk (by comparison) hospital a couple of hours away somehow figured it out.
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