Visitors on post-natal wards - a feminist issue?

For me, it's not an 'entitled fathers' issue or 'men versus women' issue, it's just a 'respect for patients' issue - patients need to be able to rest, which means that visiting hours need to be strictly limited, no matter whether it's your mum or your husband or your daughter visiting. And these visiting hours need to be enforced.

This is interesting in itself, as well as other examples of bad behaviour on wards or in hospitals generally. There was a time when there would have been no argument with a nurse in charge about inappropriate behaviour. This has in part broken down because people thought that it caused to much authoritarianism. But there is a trade off with losing that.

even when this is distressing and against their will, when this is inconvenient to the presence of males.

This is the kind of comment that makes me a little angry. It is not about men being demanding. Yes, there are demanding men out there. But most of us can see there is more than one consideration here. Men began to be admitted to births and to stay because women wanted it, and still want it, as much as men did. And it is not odd that men, who are new parents, should want to be with their infants. That's not something that it is unreasonable for us to recognise, even if it doesn't "centre women".

We should be able to talk about the problems that arise from these situations, the difficulty in accommodating people's different needs, without implying that it's about men being selfish.

Ah bless Jurgen it’s all about you isn’t it.

Erm, no. It wasn't. It was about me leaving at an appropriate time, to give women what almost everyone in this thread wants women to have - a ward to themselves. And still, people like you Barbarella1, have to have a whine about something that I never even said. Do you even read posts, or just make assumptions? Lets find out shall we...

In other words, females may have bodily privacy, consent, personal boundaries on what intimacy they're prepared to have with strangers -

but only if this is gifted to them by males, or people wishing to bring males into the situation. Even though it's law.

There is the part of it that is by now oh so familiar: 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.

Post natal wards should just be made up of private rooms. It would solve so many issues around privacy, partners staying and more.

I think this is definitely a feminist issue. I can’t imagine the standard of care being so poor if men experienced it.

The issue with partners staying over is it make some women uncomfortable. After birth you are incredibly vulnerable a male stranger is hardly going to put you at ease. Then remember that 86,000 women are raped or sexually assaulted in the Uk every year. The chances of a women on the ward having to deal with vulnerability and past trauma are huge.

For a practical point of view a ward becomes hotter, noisier and crowded with essentially triple capacity if men are allowed to stay.

I have no issue with men in private rooms but women deserve dignity and privacy after childbirth so surely wards should remain single sex.

And yet you have hospitals being built with all private room except maternity care. So the whole 'the curtains need to be open' doesn't apply because in other units care is having to be provided with people in private rooms. Wards are outdated, intrusive and counter-productive because times have moved on and people should be accorded privacy and dignity in addition to proper care. That can't happen on a ward (ICU excepted but that's extreme case, thankfully, and visitors are much more restricted in there).

I'm still of the view that the answer is single rooms. Maternity hospitals here are almost all single rooms, there are cots available for the fathers if they want to stay. And since the meals are to order, fathers can order their own and pay for them.

NICUs also have family rooms for mothers and fathers to stay with their babies as much as possible.

For example, people on mental health wards are vulnerable people who need an advocate, but we don’t routinely have a family member sleeping next to their hospital bed each night, for a whole host of reasons that also apply to maternity wards.

It is a respect for other people problem and a lack of boundaries being enforced problem, which is linked to underfunded, overworked, midwives working in a poor culture.

But however unpalatable it is, many if not most women are not relaxed in the presence of male strangers, and are not happy to be intimately touched, have intimate conversations, be in a state of undress or be carrying catheter bags and leaking fluids in front of a male stranger, regardless of how lovely he may be if you get to know him. And it isn't one male stranger, it's potentially a room full of them, at a time when that woman needs to be able to rest and feel safe for her own recovery and the good of her baby.

I was re reading Gill Sim's wonderful book 'Why Mummy doesn't give a ' the other day, and she mentions the subconscious reaction when her son's voice breaks and for a few days she keeps hearing a strange man's voice in the house. She's programmed to alert for it, there are reasons. There's a limit to how much it is reasonable to ask women to try and consciously override this for social reasons to benefit other people.

Sorry. If a mother declares herself unable to advocate for her baby was what I meant.

But the baby isn’t necessarily a patient and isn’t undergoing medical treatment. If a baby declares herself unable to advocate for the treatment of a baby, then of course another person with parental responsibility should be sought.

It is the norm for vulnerable adults to be in hospital without a family member present.

Vulnerable people should never be left in the hospital alone. Children especially should have an advocate present at all times. Mom very likely isn’t capable of that job immediately after birth. I know I couldn’t walk across the hospital to follow my infant to tests after my stomach had been cut open. Dad’s presence is for the baby and it is essential.

Yeah, this is important. I wasn't in any shape to advocate for or follow around my babies, and I wasn't always able to advocate for myself. The father is the parent of a minor child in the hospital. That's a relationship that exists separately from the mother/child relationship.

I see there is an example given of establishing feeding, but if you can’t do that without the assistance of a health care worker, surely that is a medical need?

More home births and more support to allow new mothers to go home quickly might be part of the solution.

Why are women on maternity wards other than for medical care?

When I had my first dc, I had an unbelievably disturbed night in a ward with 6 mums and babies, and that was before you bring visitors into it. New babies cry and need to be fed, understandably. This is disruptive for all the other mums and babies in the ward.

I could at least see and accept that that was inevitable.

I was much less happy with the entire family (not just the husband) of the woman in the bed next to me, who stayed well beyond visiting hours, until late in the night, including children running about etc. It was incredibly disruptive and annoying to everyone else in the ward - there were clear, limited visiting hours, but they were just ignored and not enforced by any of the staff.

For me, it's not an 'entitled fathers' issue or 'men versus women' issue, it's just a 'respect for patients' issue - patients need to be able to rest, which means that visiting hours need to be strictly limited, no matter whether it's your mum or your husband or your daughter visiting. And these visiting hours need to be enforced.

Separate to that, care needs in hospital need to be met by increasing staffing - sadly, this is an issue that affects all patients, not just those in maternity wards, as anyone with responsibility for looking after an elderly parent will know.

I see your point ... but there are women(I was one) who don't need medical care but aren't ready to go home for a few days for various reasons. Maybe there needs to be more of a separation between 'normal' post natal care (help with establishing feeding etc) and those mothers and babies who do need medical care ?

Some people are missing the point entirely - if you are in hospital it’s because you need medical care. There are exceptions - where you are low risk and delivered too late in the day to have an early discharge, for example.

Birth is increasingly medicalised and the trauma sustained by both mums and babies and their care needs afterwards are higher than ever. We have babies on IV antibiotics hidden all day behind curtains, when not so long ago these babies would have been in incubators on a neonatal unit. These are very poorly babies, often on the brink of becoming septic. And we have become so focused on privacy and the importance of whole family bonding that we think it’s ok to have very sick patients behind curtains. This doesn’t happen in any other type of ward - on elderly wards curtains are only drawn when patients are having personal cares/getting in and out of bed etc.

Postnatal care isn’t a family event for all women. For increasing numbers of women and babies it’s a medical event and the safety at that time is paramount. Men in the bays is another message that it’s just like a hotel and increase the withdrawal of ALL women behind their curtains. I personally find it very sad when you go in and see a woman who you can tell feels intimidated by the environment outside their curtain. I don’t think anyone should feel like that in a hospital.

(The last paragraph was in response to the poster in favour of wards with the curtains open all the time)

Excellent posts by Michelle, SorryAuntLydia and others.

And this: 'in maternity, one of the most vulnerable times in a woman's life, she's expected her entire body and its functions and process to be open to all and sundry. Just no.' Cf. also bloody Bounty.

And I certainly don't want to be forced into some kind of collective experience of compulsory chumminess with and 'learning from' other women. Bringing the atomisation of society into this misses the point that people have always socialised in groups with 'people like us'. Chucking the transient and extremely diverse population of a maternity ward together, each one having had a more or less physically and emotionally shattering experience, is not going to produce some kind of lovely commune. Again - nobody's demanding men bond over their medical procedures.

When you go for treatment on your genitals in other settings, male or female, you do so in single sex environments (although some health care professionals may be of the opposite sex, they are just that, vetted and trained HCPs, not randoms), but in maternity, one of the most vulnerable times in a woman's life, she's expected her entire body and its functions and process to be open to all and sundry. Just no.

Most people here on FWR take the position that female patients should take absolute priority on a single sex, female hospital ward.

Exactly. And having someone else's boyfriend ogling you as you try and breastfeed and deal with the pain of your episiotomy stitches is not prioritising the needs of female patients.

As feminists we should be protecting the maternity units as safe spaces for women to give birth and recover - rather than the crucible of fatherhood.

This. It's ridiculous to pick and choose which female spaces should or should not cater for men depending on what suits you.

Maternity units should be the number 1 safe space for women and seem to centre male needs more and more.

I posted on the other thread about the male partners on my local postnatal ward tucking into the breakfast laid out for the female patients. They were all crowded around the table chatting and helping themselves to everything. Men like to push boundaries and it's annoying at best, intimidating at worst.

I feel we’re in an age of such massive individualism that women, or anyone else for that matter, won’t fight for all women but only for themselves as an individual.

About 2,000 newborns a year are taken into care. Those women are also on maternity wards. The notion that the best hospital care for women is either more care from visitors or more care from other patients is not a solution.