Dads staying overnight on children’s ward

The teen girl situation is similar to the maternity ward situation... you have conflicting needs of some patients (women/girls needing all female space) to needs of other patients needing a relative to be a carer. Both can't have their needs fully met in that situation.... so which do you chose to prioritise. Ideal world is single rooms but thats not going to happen in near future.

The whole situation is hellish.

He is doing good thanks. Home since January and it feels so good!

Exactly! If males couldn't have stayed, I would've lost my mind. The situation was already incredibly hard and I missed my other child terribly. I would've barely seen him in 10 months which isn't far off a whole year! It's very important to highlight that a hospital stay can be months and months for some children.

One of the wards he was in was bigger than the other 2 wards and had separate bays as well as a separate ward for teenagers. My son was 8 and then turned 9 not long before he came home so not on the teen ward but on the kid ward, it was split into 3 bays and they tried to keep it as babies/toddlers in bay 1, boys in bay 2 and girls in bay 3 but the other 2 wards didn't have separate bays, it was all open and also very small.

The staff try their best with what they have. They really do.

It wouldn't bother me. My Dad was a key figure when I was a sick child. One of my earliest memories is him being there when I awoke in the night as a toddler with pneumonia

@Kirbert2 that all sounds so hard and so stressful for all of you.
Hope your DC is well now.

But it's a prime example of why hospitals cannot dictate that only female or male family can stay.

And I say family because for some children it might be Granny or Gramps also taking turns with the parents.

In an ideal world it would all be single rooms, or only female family on girls bays, male on boys bays, but we don't live in an ideal world.

We eventually got into the routine of me staying during the week and then swapping with DH at the weekend. It also wasn't our local hospital so couldn't get a lot of support from family etc who who too far and also had to work during the week.

So I'm very glad that DH could stay. It meant I could have a break from the hospital and could also spend some time with our other child at the weekend.

I know most people don't have a long stay but it isn't exactly uncommon either, especially on the ward we spent the longest time on. When we were there, my son was one of 4 long term patients, the longest had been there for a year, the others for a couple of months.

My youngest son has a chronic condition and we (DH and me) had to spend too many nights in hospital with him when he was young. In some hospitals we slept on a chair, on some hospitals (our favourite) there was a fold up bed for parents near his own. We usually stayed in 4 kids to a room with a single bathroom with curtains always open unless a procedure was being done. Then they were closed for privacy.

We saw mothers, fathers, uncles, grandmothers etc staying with the children. Frankly, it didn't register the sex of the people staying with the other children. We were all in hospital caring and often supporting each other in difficult moments.

Genuinely, I don't understand the OP or some of the posts in this thread.

Huh, I've always changed into PJs (as has DH) when I've been in overnight with a sick child. But then our local hospital has a pull-down cupboard camp bed beside every patient bed, so it feels much more like "going to bed" than trying to sleep in a chair (in which case, I'd stay in day clothes too). We are lucky - the children's ward got a revamp a few years ago, and installing parent beds was a superb decision.

We've been in so often now that DH has the various bays and private side rooms ranked in order of preference. Obviously he doesn't mention this to the staff, but is always relieved when DD is not in Bay 1 😂

After my last visit (with the Dad) I went out and bought leggings and a long nightshirt, to make sure it didn't ride up.

I'd never owned leggings. And I don't even think I've had those ones on. And I'll count myself lucky that LO hasn't had another hospital stay.

All of his hospital admissions were emergency admissions, with viral wheeze so I'd never had time to plan or think about what I was wearing.

Where is the money going to come from to build all these private rooms and where are the sick children going to go while they shut the ward to build them ?
I am just grateful that there's a hospital, never mind hotel like facilities.
I'm ex NHS and we used to say that the blue H stands for hospital not hotel.

I'm surprised at all the objections to other fathers seeing them in their pjs though. There's never been a time I've been in hospital with my children, for any length of time, that I've got into pjs. Normal clothes 24/7 here

Absolutely and sometimes the same clothes for days on end , when it's just not possible to go home and get clean ones .

Demanding private rooms ? Jesus , some people obviously have no idea what it's like in a hospital.

My son is too and was also put in a,side room if available ,he has comp!ex disabilities and very challenging behaviour,we also got to.use the sensory room
But I would never demand it,
There ,s always going to be Someone might have higher needs.

This! My daughter is autistic and was put in a side room when it was possible . All of us including my daughter completely understood when it wasn’t a possibility and wouldn’t have dreamt of asking. If it happened great, if not frankly I was just grateful we were getting the treatment she needed. We just always went where she was put and it was often for several weeks. I know the nurses did their absolute best to make her comfortable and her stays as manageable as possible. When you’re in there a lot you see how much pressure staff are under on paeds wards.

I can’t stand the parents who ‘demand’ a private room. Or who ‘demand’ anything for that matter. Who do you think you are?

We have 3 side rooms, which are used for patients who are infectious, sometimes patients who are severely autistic or whoever we decide needs it. And if a patient is in one and I need it for someone else, they will get moved out and put in a bay. Our wards are old, we have the set up we have. And as the nurse in charge I get to decide who has the rooms based on clinical need.

Clinical need and patients are the priority. It’s not about putting extra demands on over stretched services. It’s not a hotel.

Me too.

Me too I just wore leggings and t shirts .

You can demand all you like , but it's not all about you and your wants and desire,s
If there is a child with a higher needs for the side room they would get it.

If your DC was taken into hospital, I’m sure you would stay with them regardless of any other parents. A father has as much right as a mother to be there.
Private rooms for everyone would be wonderful but it’s not going to happen.
When DS was in hospital following surgery on a badly broken leg, DH and I took it in turns.

🤣That’s hysterical!!! You’re lucky to get a bed for your child and clinical need trumps everything re private rooms which we had from time to time. No way on earth would I be telling nurses how to run their wards.

10mths is a really long time. There's no way anyone could cope with one of those narrow not quite flat chairs for 10mths.

I'll count myself lucky to only have had a handful of short stays but by the end of 3 nights I was dying for a proper bed.

It was certainly a journey. He went from not even a broken bone and never spending a night in hospital to 10 months in hospital, completely healthy and then it all went to hell for a while.

He's doing good now, still some after effects of everything he went through but he's still here and they told me he wouldn't be so I feel grateful every single day.

To be fair, he was in a private room in the local hospital which seemed to be the norm there but he was transferred to the children's hospital overnight because he needed a PICU and the local hospital didn't have one so we never actually got to stop overnight in that room.

He was in various private rooms over the 10 months at the children's hospital such as when he was first in PICU and then various times during the 3 different wards he was on but always for specific reasons, usually isolating due to suspected infection and PICU was because of how unwell he was initially.

There should be private rooms.

I was the only parent the one night I spent in hospital with ds.

I wouldn’t have slept in a room with an unknown man.

I hated the postnatal ward for this reason. Hated being surrounded by strange men day and night. Had a home birth the next time.

I think this is probably quite hospital dependant, my daughter has had lots of admissions in our local hospital and the bigger children's hospital, in the local hospital they only had one 4 bed bay and the other 15 beds were all in private rooms so we were unlucky if we didn't get in one of the private rooms.

Ten months? You're a saint! And there should definitely be private rooms for that long an admission.