Dads staying over night

[silverperiwinkle]

What do you think?
m.burtonmail.co.uk/Burton-Queen-s-Hospital-introduce-scheme-allow/story-27564928-detail/story.html

Tbh I think a blanket policy of having partners stay over would be used by management as an excuse to provide less care all round. A very dangerous policy all round because as can be seen by people's stories care is already inadequate.

starling I'm really sorry for what you have been through but it does not convince me that partners should routinely stay over night. For a start if no medical care was required then mothers would be discharged home with their partners. These stories make me even more sure that the answer is more staff and better care.

That was pretty shit, wasn't it?

Yes, as are most stories where the partners made a huge difference. They shouldn't have to. :(

Which is why these policies from a hospital seem more like a cop out and a cost cutting exercise.

But I can understand that emotionally you needed your partner there. In which case it should be recognised by the medical staff and allowed as special circumstances, preferably in a more private setting for your recovery.

I had a hellish time when ds2 was born I was in severe pain and exhausted after a cs and placenta accreta
Dh was sent home at 10pm but the person next to me had her dh there all night and he had his chair pushed so far back it took up a lot of my cubicle too and I felt self conscious as he was so near me the other side of the curtain
Didn't help that when I farted he was laughing as well

StarlingMurmuration - take a look back through at some of the reasons given by pps for having husbands there. Many of them are dramatic 'not all men!' 'my husband isn't like that' yes, we know not all men are like that but a number are rude, obnoxious, complete tits, swear an awful lot or are abusive and many other horrible horrible things. That's the stuff I was referring to. Those are being dramatic with little regard for the MH of women who have been abused, do not feel safe, do not have partners and the countless other reasons its not appropriate for men to stay over night on a female ward. It's not dismissing the MH needs at all. MH care should be part and parcel of maternity care and one of the first steps in that is ensuring women are safe and feel safe on the wards and are given the care they need. Men being on those wards beyond visiting hours will absolutely negate any of that.

I work on a Paediatric ward so on our bays we have parents spending the night with their babies, some nights the mom stays and other nights the dad stays.

I appreciate it isn't akin to a maternity ward in any way but I wonder how some of the mothers may feel about having to sleep in a bay where men are also sleeping.

We also have cubicles and in situations where the mother really needs the support of her partner then we let them both stay overnight.

In some circumstances we allow both parents to stay overnight in the bay too but usually only if the mother is in a very fragile place emotionally or if the baby is admitted at an unearthly hour in the morning where sending dad home would be considered to not be very compassionate.

In the paediatric ward the mums are not patients. And they often have the choice of being there or for their partners to be.

I have spent a few nights in a paediatric ward (thankfully just one night at a time) and felt it was very different from the night in the 6 bay maternity ward. Which was fine, but mostly because it was not the mess that it was during the day.

Writewannabe83 just out of interest, do dads stay with their children too (as in no mom) and what would happen then? I am only asking as if it is our DS1 (2yo) my dp stays
with him,as he would prefer his dad over me. It has happened to us before x

In the sense of privacy and rest parents on peads wards is far from ideal, however for that one the benefits far outweigh the problems. In the vast majority of cases that wouldn't be the same on a maternity ward.

malteser - yes we get a lot of dad's staying, it really isn't that unusual at all.

In a paediatric ward a woman might feel emotionally fragile but she won't be bleeding, shuffling around because of her stitches, spending time practically topless to establish breastfeeding and answering questions from HCPs about her episiotomy or haemorrhoids. Can you not see that there's a difference?

I have also found that on a peads ward other parents are a very good support, they have a sort of community feel that other wards don't. It is a very different environment in that sense to a maternity ward or other ward.

I stayed on Peads ward with my DS.. The next bed was moslty Dad at night..I had no issue with this. He was there for his daughter. I was not vunerable , bleeding. I was not the patient but there to support my DS. Very different IMO... On a peads ward.. the Dad has as much right to bed there as the mums. Also as I said upthread.. a lot of the physical care for the children was done by the parents. obviously medical care was given by the staff

I've stayed on paeds wards with DS too. The experiences aren't remotely comparable.

I have spent a lot of time on a paeds ward, much of it as a bf mother. It's not remotely the same.

I am really failing to see how MH can be improved by making maternity services a free for all. Try labouring with a teenage boy swishing your curtain and telling you to shut the fuck up and tell me it is beneficial to your mental health. The fact that MH services are so fucked up is a absolute disgrace but shoving a load of random blokes into female wards isn't anywhere close to an appropriate solution. Can male partners stay 24/7 on female psych units?

Did people not see where I wrote: "obviously a paediatric ward is not akin to a maternity unit in any way"

So yes, I obviously can see the difference

CaptainHolt bloody good point! And what if it was the other way. What if it was a male ward to deal with a specifically male health need (like maternity is specifically male) and there was a blanket ruling that wives could stay overnight with their husbands for support. What do you think the answer to that would be? Different scenario, granted, but what would the reaction be?

Best of it is the current making dads leave at night has been in place for decades. It works. The things that have not worked - shorter stays for women who probably need the extra day or two in hospital, Fewer midwives, A reliance on HCA's and a diminishing number of beds across all wards inc maternity with an increased demand.

All of these are the problems than need to be fixed.

ugh. I mean female. Stupid autocorrect :s

That wouldn't be ideal but at the end of the day, men are far more of a threat to women than women are to men. I highly doubt that the wife of a patient would stick her head into the next cubicle and tell a man who was moaning in pain to STFU.

I wouldn't be so sure rovinga, I have had a mother complain that ds (about 3 then) was crying when he was in hospital once. Not all women are nice compassionate people!

Well no, but that's not quite what I was saying. I meant that a woman in a maternity ward is far more likely to have an abusive partner than a man on any other ward as statistically men abuse women rather than vice versa.

I wouldn't be so sure either rovinga. Some people are the opposite of compassionate.

*more men, that should say.

Men can still be abused by women, to suggest that couldn't equally be an issue is minimising that problem even more than it already is.