to expect a toddlers parent to stay overnight in hospital?

[wheresmytractor]

Last night I spent the night in hospital with my youngest son who is 16 months old. He has a possible chest infection, brochial wheeze and needed a nebuliser, inhaler, steroids, antibiotics and a nose tube with oxygen during the night.

Right next to us another toddler is brought in about 7pm. She was about the same age as my little one and had the same thing, except she actually sounded worse, a very croupy cough and quite distressed.

The nurse started to run through how the chair folds out to a bed so the mum could stay when she says "Oh, i'm not staying, i'm shattered" . She left 5 minutes later. This poor little girl howled and whinned ALL NIGHT. She would only settle a bit when she cried herself to sleep (only to wake not long after with her cough and needing her inhaler) and when a nurse cuddled her. I felt so so sorry for her. My little one needed lots of cuddles last night and I got only a little uncomfortable sleep, but I would not DREAM of leaving him there all night alone.

The mum waltzed in at 11am this morning, and I thought what a bloody cow for leaving her daughter distressed and alone and for placing that additional burden on the nurses.

So am I being unreasonable to think this?

" The woman would surely have said if she had to leave for any other reason than being tired."

not necessarily - I wouldn't. Some of us come out with any old shite in public in order to make it look like our private lives aren't terribly complicated and difficult. Usually the "real" reason for me behaving in a particular manner would take much longer to explain so a piece of bullshit is the easy option.

Maybe she was just tired and needed sleep. I suffer from insomnia, I struggle with my sleep as it is quite regularly. However I do have to try and ensure I get sleep each night, even if only 2 or 3 hours......if I don't then I know from past experience that my depression very very quickly returns (and then I sleep even less - often being awake for a couple of days at a time and that in turns makes the depression worse). Just one night of bad/no sleep and it can mess up my "regular" couple of hours sleep at night for weeks.

And I know that an exhausted mother with depression isn't a good thing to be (I've been there too many times before ) so presuming I had a childcare sorted, but was in a bad place with my sleeping at the time then yes, actually I may have been one of those mothers saying they were going home to sleep - so I could be a better mother when my child came out of hospital and be able to care for them better.

I have to say though - that I think our hospital is quite good. DS3 was admitted to hospital for a day when he was a baby. We had to take DS2 (nursery age) with us to start with as we were unable to find anyone to have him straight away. The GP that I'd seen in the morning had said either go up in a car (exH was still a "D"H at the time could drive - I couldn't) or if I couldn't find anyone to drive us up them he would call an ambulance to take us - as he didn't want us making the 1hr trip on public transport with DS2. So DS2 was there with us for about 4 hours in this small room. Playing merry hell as he was bored rigid (they did find some toys for him to play with but he wanted space to run around and play).

Thankfully we found someone to take DS2 and DS1 when he came out of school until about 8pm. And then DS3 was discharged and we went and picked them up and went home.

It was the same when ds2 was i SCBU. I camped out, even argued for an extra night on the ward as the only alternative accommodation i could organise was half an hour away and i had to get home and get my car first, round trip of 2 hours not counting spending an hour with my elder two and i had nowhere near enough milk for him to do that on day 2. Once i was discharged i spent from 8am til 12pm at his side and drove to my parents for a few hours sleep and some food.

In the five days i was there there were about 5 other babies in the unit:

One was discharged on our second day, i hadn't seen his parents before that.

One was there all week and his parents came once... they couldn't even tell which baby was theirs when they walked in (3 babies there at the time)

One was the first baby of a young couple... I saw them twice, they stayed for an hour and dropped off some milk.

A baby was admitted on our second last day, that evening the nurse sent the student nurse up to the mother to let her no what was going on as she hadn't been in yet and the student nurse came back with a white face and looked and said 'She's discharged herself... she's gone home'. I felt so bad for the student, she'd been so pleased to be working with the baby in SCBU as it had been the first birth she'd ever witnessed and she was still on a high... she looked so distraught that they'd just left the baby, even the senior nurses were gobsmacked.

Only one other baby had a mother who spent hours in the unit feeding and sitting by the side of the incubator.

Now I had two young children at home so it wasn't easy for me to stay... I knew my children were really scared and upset at home but dp was with them and they were with my mother when he came to us except the day they came too as I needed to see them. My baby who was ill and strapped to 10 different machines needed me more so that's where i stayed.... I'd do the same for any of the three even if it meant leaving the remaining two with friends and neighbours if dp and my mother weren't in the picture.

Kerry, did you have support with caring for him after discharge?

A delirious parent is not best placed to advocate for their baby.

You have to drag yourself away though for your sake and the Childs. An exhausted parent is useless! I actually found it easier to nip away when he was in hdu because he had a nurse with him 24/7

the chairs in the SCBU my DD was in were designed to be impossible to sleep in. If they would admit that families are now expected to provide all the care, they'd probably have to make some attempt to facilitate that, with access to camp beds or comfortable chairs for sleeping, showers and food.

By the time i left to get some sleep on the night i was discharged i'd had an average of 1/2 hours sleep a night since he'd been born. I sat by his side until i couldn't keep my eyes open and then went to the ward to lie down, the nurses called me as soon as there was a rustle out of him. I did the majority of his care, including holding him down for arduous blood taking sessions

This was in SCBU so I'm surprised that others weren't allowed to stay with their babies.. there were no sleeping facilities but i could have slept in a chair or gone down the hall to the rec room and pulled a few chairs together. The nights I went to my parents it was as much for a hot meal as the sleep as i was only getting a few hours there anyway between the long drive and getting up at 3am to pump.

The nurses made it clear that they were very pleased that i was there and were happy to be able to only worry about medical issues for one child as i was doing all the feeding, changing, adjusting of goggles and wires and everything else he pulled loose every time he moved. One one night they had a 4 babies and there were 2 nurses on duty. I was taking care of ds2 but they couldn't deal with all three other babies at once and for much of the night there was a baby crying as they just couldn't get to him (wasn't hungry or dirty, just needed to be held) I offered to pick him but they couldn't let me... it was really horrible though, it was the little baby that had been abandoned by his mother without her so much as popping it to see him

The night before he was possibly going to be allowed home i was saying goodbye to a nurse who'd been with us from the first night and who got us breastfeeding despite the [idiot] doctor telling me not to feed him and she said to me 'Don't thank us, the fact that he's leaving so quickly is completely down to you' (A reference to my many fights with the doctors about his care and feeding)

Now she might have been saying that as a kindness but i did get the impression from the nurses that there was a feeling that if parents spent a bit more time and energy on their babies that some of them might make it home more quickly... the doctors aren't infallible, in fact some of them verge on the dangerous and the nurses don't have the time to spot every little change in the babies in their care. The night staff consisted of 2 nurses on a unit that catered for up to 9/10 intensive care babies at once... I was a regular occurrence that i had to flag up issues with ds2 to them or the doctors as they simply wouldn't have been spotted otherwise (he had a habit of pulling out his IV lines, his breathing was tachypneic and his SATS often dropped dangerously low very quickly)

Kerry - 7 days is tough but there are parents who have dc in for months and years....

part of the problem I agree is that there needs to be openness and honesty about how much care families are expected to provide - because it is a grey area this often isn't the case, and it makes things worse. DS's monitor was always going off - waking him and me up - but almost always it wasn't because of a problem, just because he had moved and kicked it off or something. So, the nurses would never check if there really was a problem or not. It was totally up to the parents to work it out and alert them if so. We were very well looked after in PICU, and on the specialist cardiac ward we were on. They were totally different.

When we are admitted we fill a form in with the staff and discuss what level of care I am willing to do for him even down to if I want to help with meds, be there to help when they do blood gases etc. For me it was great, one of the worst things about being in hdu is how helpless you feel but the way the staff involved me meant I didn't feel as bad

It is awful, but as some have said she maybe didn't have any help for other children at home.
When my DD was in for a week with rotavirus, the baby in the next room who was only 18days old and had been born 6 weeks early had no parent staying with him .The mother and father came in when the staff phoned them to speak to them about his care ,but they never visited more than twice during that week . When they were there they would go out to smoke after 10 minutes. I would not have believed it if I did not see it with my own eyes.
that said I stayed with my dd most of the time,even though my Ds had to stay with various friends,as my DH was away with the RAF and they would not let him come home.

I do think there should be more provision in NICU's and children's wards generally for parents to stay.

But the others thing with NICU is that often a baby is transferred there miles away from where the parents live which makes visiting harder if there is no provision for the parents to stay.

And sleeping in a chair next to an incubator was not an option for me 2 days post c-section as well as being told I wasn't allowed to stay.

Must say that leaving my baby in hospital whilst I went home was one of the hardest things I've had to do so feel so much sympathy for those that have little choice but to do so.

Having read this thread, I think it all depends on circumstances, and clearly when the child would be distressed if the parent wasn't there, well they should stay if they can.

Clearly this is not the case with a newborn baby - additionally as the mother needs to recover from difficult birth. Also in case of child who is in hospital a lot (esp slightly older) and is relaxed/ok about being there and is not going to be distressed to wake in night and parent not being there.

When DS1 was 3 he had an operation under a GA, just a day thing, and didn't stay overnight, but he had nightmares for several months afterwards as we (me and DH) were not in the recovery room when he came round (we were not allowed to be there, we were both waiting on the ward).

He kept on saying that he woke up and we weren't there and he was scared. DH was there when he went under (it was early in morning and I had to take DD to neighbours so they could take her to school). I expect DS1 thought his daddy would be there when he woke up.

I recently had a GA - it is really weird, unlike when you sleep, there is no sensation of time having passed. So you feel like you blink your eyes, and you are in a different room, with different people. It was disturbing for me, as an adult who knew what to expect, and I was desperate to get out of the recovery room.

I think you'd all be a little surprised and guilty if you realised how many mothers are reading your opinions in tears. At least I hope so

not everyone's opinions littlebabynothing, I hope. I have been trying to explain how hard it is, and how people need to concentrate on support for families, not judging.

Yes tholeon you're right - not everyone is being sanctimonious. Apologies for lumping all comments together, I'm just flabbergasted at the sheer lack of understanding demonstrated on this thread

I'm not sure it is even being sanctanoneous, more just not understanding what it's like. One or two nights is one thing but the longer it gets, or the more they are ill it changes things and changes your view on the issue.

I find the condemnation of NICU parents particularly nasty - the baby often won't be aware of the person sitting beside their incubator. The parents have a huge amount to come to terms with - a traumatic birth, often a baby with a poor prognosis. They won't have had much opportunity to bond or to recover.

I do think parents who need or want to always be there, should be facilitated as much as possible. But those that can't or won't should not be judged. Nobody knows what they would do in those shoes.

I dont know whether you are being u or not but dont really like the judging - sounds like her child will suffer for it in terms of having no care and thats a responsibilily shared by both parents and the hospital.

We have clearly moved to s Spanish system of care in our hospitals without this being publicly acknowledged - when I was in a couple of years ago critically ill, dh had to do everything for me once I was out of ICU - so in the HDU he was emptying catheters, cleaning and checking on drips etc.

Am surprised to hear of people staying with 10 year olds as well but maybe thats because the standard of care is so very low in some places - god knows I dont trust hospitals myself.

How different to when we were young - I spent a lot of time in my local childrens hospital on my own and thought it great fun, maybe I was just odd.

I too am upset about the NICU comments. I will not defend myself, but I did not spend every minute with DS2 until he "woke up" (he'd been sedated on a ventilator). I would not, and did not, judge any parents for any time they did or did not spend with their babies, FFS it was the hardest time of my life, and of theirs.

However, when he was admitted to hospital twice in the first six months I barely left him. Mind you, my local (Dutch) hospital gives you a room with a bed and bathroom to share with your child.

I hope the OP's son gets well soon.