Visitors on post-natal wards - a feminist issue?

This doesn't strike me as anything men particularly wanted or are demanding.

This is a part of it, with some of the stress on the situation being caused by the expectations and behaviours of male partners, for example the one last week in the papers who wanted to be able to walk around bare legged in a nightshirt on the ward and was very cross about having his personal privacy infringed when nurses asked him to get dressed. There's a lot of evidence around on various threads all over MN.

Yes, this is about some women wanting their partners with them overnight. This is also about some women not wanting to be on a ward at night in a very vulnerable state with a number of strange males, regardless of whether they're showing wholly appropriate social behaviour or not. This is also about growing expectations of men being present 24/7 on a ward for several reasons including valuing the father's role and rights to be with their child, the need of women to have someone with them because of inadequate care and staffing and so on. The issue stays the same about is this in the best interests of the women who are the patients.

It's a mixed bag, I think. There are quite clearly some men who feel entitled to be on maternity wards, and in the very worst case scenarios are there to continue their control and abuse of their partners. Others are there because they've been asked to, feel it's expected or want to protect/provide care for their partner and baby and wouldn't choose to do so otherwise.

How am I missing the point? (Honest question)

You were going on about being mean to men
"hurtful to males or to females who feel the need to stand up for males then they frankly need to give their heads a wobble"

That to me completely misses the point. This doesn't strike me as anything men particularly wanted or are demanding. It has nothing to do with standing up for men. This is about women wanting different things. Men can be blamed for a lot, but this isn't one.

There's also the context in which some women are pushing for this. It's happening in a situation where there is inadequate funding for postnatal care, so lots of women think they will/did need a partner there to look after them. Not all of them would think that if there were sufficient clinical staff available. The inadequacy is a feminist issue.

How am I missing the point? (Honest question)

The point I'm making is that while female partners are pushing for their own male partner to be there overnight, there are clearly other female patients who are very unhappy with this. Because they cannot feel safe or comfortable with multiple unknown males in a room where they are vulnerable. That this is good for the female who wants the male there does not make him any less threatening to the female in the next bed who doesn't want males in the ward overnight.

Men are being asked to come into the space because many women want them there.

That's perhaps one reason. It is however also the case that there have been significant cuts to staffing on postnatal wards and this is one way of plugging some of the gaps. Perhaps even justifying them since hey, dads have the right to bond with their babies too and in various dinky surveys asking women if they wanted their partners there but carefully not asking if they were happy with the presence of other people's, the women said they did. It's an expedient preference, if you're looking to save money. In a way that some of the things women might also want, such as more scans than the NHS typically offer, are not. Worth thinking critically about whether that had anything to do with it.

Michelleoftheresistance

I think you are missing the point. It's probably more likely that it is the female partner who is pushing for her male partner to be there.

Goose many women perceive unknown males as less comfortable or safe to be around, and are more embarrassed, anxious and uncomfortable than they would be around unknown females.

I'm not blaming the entire male race for this, I'm sorry you feel it's mean to men, but this is the truth and the reason why mixed sex spaces are unfair. There are reasons why females don't feel safe or secure in vulnerable situations around unknown males, this is a fact, and if that's hurtful to males or to females who feel the need to stand up for males then they frankly need to give their heads a wobble.

women should sacrifice normal, regulated, legislated and compulsory privacy, dignity, consent and bodily autonomy, even when this is distressing and against their will, when this is inconvenient to the presence of males
It’s not just males who invade my privacy and dignity. Women can be strangers as well. Not all women are nice or safe to be around. I don’t want to breastfeed in front of other female patients, or be naked and undignified and covered in blood. That’s why I kept my curtains drawn - for privacy from EVERYONE, not just from males.

Why are women being asked to sacrifice their feelings of dignity, privacy and safety, if not to permit men into the space?

Men are being asked to come into the space because many women want them there.

That is not about doing things because men are pushing for it, or men trying to get one over on women. It's about a difficulty accommodating the preferences of different women, or even of different families.

Just because something affects women doesn't mean that it is men doing it to them.

Who said anything about leaflets in the back of notes? It needs to be an active discussion between woman and care providers, with full information and no pushing of anything because the woman decides what her priorities are.

Also, reducing pressure on postnatal wards and redefining them as a place for the sick is not an inherent positive we need to be aiming for. It would be fine if all low risk women wanted epidurals and therefore required admission afterwards, just as it would be if they all gave birth at home. We need to be demanding adequate resources for the care women want, not trying to persuade them to give birth in the cheapest possible way because God forbid we need to pay for sufficient anaesthetists and postnatal midwives if they don't.

Cola, this may be recent then. I have older children and at that time babies were not registered as patients.

If it takes two midwives and a doctor to convince a couple to agree to either them of them picking up a crying ill baby, that’s a serious care issue. The mother in that situation clearly is clearly not fine, and it requires medical or social services involvement.

@Nameofchanges the baby is also a patient. They do a series of tests on the baby to check s/he is fine so you both get discharged.

On the postnatal ward I was put on all the babies were ill apart from mine. Also 3 of the other 5 women were also needing extra medical attention.

All the staff did was tell us when to get food but told us we needed to get it ourselves. They also told you were you could make up bottles for the baby if you had to supplement their feed/could not breast feed.

It was left to dads and grandmothers to make up the bottles as the 3 women whose babies needed extra feeds couldn't walk to the bottle making room to do so.

My DP and some of the other men were upset to see one woman as she was told to walk when you could see she had a very traumatic c-section. She and her baby were disturbed every 90 minutes by a doctor and/or midwife for the 2 days I was kept in. They also kept drawing back her curtains. This probably ensured all the other men behaved, and another mother whose older kid of about 3 who came to visit with her father made them both leave within 2 hours.

There was actually only one annoying couple and it was the woman who was annoying as she prevented the father from doing his instinct, which was to pick up their baby when she cried. It took 2 midwives and a doctor to tell her that when the baby cried they needed to comfort her. Even when she was told that she had a go at him because while she was fine their baby was ill.

www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/birthplace

Please do read this. It was a huge study and informs current NICE guidelines on the counselling of women on place of birth. For low risk women having their 2nd, 3rd + babies giving birth at home has no difference in outcome for mum and baby, but does see reduced rates of caesarean and instrumental deliveries.

I stand by my use of the word ‘push’. Change does not come about from leaflets tucked into the back of maternity notes. That doesn’t mean we use guilt or coercion to sway women’s choices, it means we clearly state facts in the hope that women feel empowered to make informed choices, not the choices of their husbands or mothers. That is how any public health campaign works - posters, adverts on the telly, antenatal talks etc.

This has gone off topic - but I do think the safe movement of women away from the hospital setting who do not have a medical need to be in hospital would ease the pressure on postnatal wards and redefine them as a place for unwell mothers and babies.

Home births are definitely not safer than hospitals. If emergency intervention is needed then the hospital is an ambulance ride away which could mean life or death. If women want a home birth then great but it should never be pushed on them.

If you mean demystify and legitimise homebirth, then let's use those terms rather than talk about pushing a place of birth. They're not the same thing and we shouldn't look to push anything, we should provide accurate information and facilitate informed choice. Anything else is completely inappropriate. This means discussion of safety stats, and availability of pain relief regardless of whether individual women you might have come across raised either as an issue. Women need all of that.

Well access to epidural was definitely what came up for me with my 3rd. At any rate, the other issue was that the nearest CLU was FAR and increasingly is so for many women as services are centralised and smaller units closed down.

And again, the open curtains ward can't work with the visiting hours that are the norm now because people don't want to be all out in the open, even when ill after giving birth. It's a paradigm that's a thing of the past. Wanting privacy isn't anti-social, necessarily, it's about increasing awareness that being ill does not preclude the need for privacy and dignity.

Society has moved on from this idea that you have to be all out even if makes you uncomfortable or is against your religious beliefs.

It's unworkable.

I think you take my ‘push’ to mean on an independent level. I mean as a society. There is still huge suspicion and ridicule of homebirths as ‘hippy’ ‘dirty’ and ‘dangerous’. They do need to be pushed to be seen as a legitimate and safe choice for women. For low risk women having their 2nd, 3rd etc babies a home birth is the safest place for them to give birth. When you discuss home birth with women the lack of epidural is not what comes up. Instead you hear ‘my partner is worried about the mess’ ‘my mum doesn’t think it’s safe. No one would forgive me if something went wrong’. That’s concerning because it shows a widespread lack of societal understanding about what a home birth entails and facts about its safety.

Pushing women into a place of birth where the most effective form of pain relief won't be available is inexcusable. I'm all for the right to home birth and it's a perfectly legitimate choice for those who want it, but trying to push it isn't feminist.

Home births should also be pushed for low risk women and early discharges from hospital. If this all happened then you would hopefully only be left with women staying overnight in hospital because of major abdominal surgery, unwell babies and unwell mums (pre-eclampsia, sepsis etc). And I maintain that in those cases open bays are the safest option for those patients.

I thought this was the way things were going. Women no longer stay for 5 days like when I had DS1 27 years ago. Then, I was ill with blood loss and the nursery nurses picked DS up for me (I was told to ask for help having fainted twice) and the other mothers got stuff out my locker for me and gave me lots of support and company. When my DTs were born and in SCBU, an ante-natal mum came and talked to me and I helped here when her DD was in SCBU.

Not all mothers have a man to come and help, and many will not be on their first child and the father will be needed at home. Then there are those who need to be away from men. There needs to be space for them separate from the needs of the couples.

@EuroMillionsWinner the maternity hospital in Glasgow was not renovated along with the main QEUH. It was done up about ten years ago when the maternity at the Queen Mother’s closed.
All the maternity hospitals in Glasgow seem to have the same layout in the four bed bays with barely any room for visitors during the day let alone overnight

Did men start to stay on wards because most women wanted it?

I don’t think breastfeeding support is medical care unless the baby has lost a significant amount of weight and is therefore needing assistance with feeding.

Breastfeeding used to be a socially learnt skill, and as a society we have undermined it through normalising formula feeding and hidden it through both the shaming and sexualisation of women’s bodies. I personally believe peer support is the most valuable resource for successful breastfeeding and hope that in the future this is valued and more accessible.

If you solved the breastfeeding ‘issue’ with more community midwifes and peer support groups then a lot of that care could be provided at home and community centres. Home births should also be pushed for low risk women and early discharges from hospital. If this all happened then you would hopefully only be left with women staying overnight in hospital because of major abdominal surgery, unwell babies and unwell mums (pre-eclampsia, sepsis etc). And I maintain that in those cases open bays are the safest option for those patients.

There's evidence on this thread and every thread that the benefits of males being present - and not just visiting, through the night, round the clock in the same room - should outweigh those women wanting those things.

Why are women being asked to sacrifice their feelings of dignity, privacy and safety, if not to permit men into the space?