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

Abuse of men by women is even more under reported than abuse of women by men. Mainly because society teaches the victim that it "doesn't happen"

Yes I know but I'm saying that statistically it's much higher for women. 30 men get killed per year in domestic violence situations (and are not always the victims of women) vs 2 women per week. That's quite a difference.

When DS was readmitted to a paeds ward at 4 days old we were given a private room - precisely because I was a recent c section mum and it was acknowledged that I required additional privacy and this would be compromised with dads staying on the main ward.

Which would indicate that my hospital, at least, has some common bloody sense.

the problem is with the shit care and not the absence of your DH

Exactly this.

This conversation has happened many times on MN, and I always read the threads. And 99% of the reasons posters give for having wanted their OH or another family member with them relate to poor care and poor staffing, not to needing their particular husband with them. What they needed was someone who had the time to look after them and help them during a very difficult time. Obviously there are always exceptions, but the situations involving (as one example) the kind of severe anxieties where a person cannot be alone in a medical situation.

I don't know whether I'm in the minority here but as much as I love my OH and as much it might have been nice in a private room to have him stay longer, what I actually wanted when I was in pain, immobilized and terrified that I actually had a baby that I didn't know what I was supposed to do with, was a healthcare professional who could help with the pain, who could tell me how to sit up without tearing my stitches, who could assist me with the baby. Not, much as I love the man, my equally exhausted, equally overwhelmed OH who had no more idea what to do in that situation than I did.

A big difference rovinja but still minimising. Quite nasty to do so

I'm not minimising, I'm just quoting statistics. But clearly, judging from your previous posts, you care more about all the poor menz who don't get to stay the night on the postnatal ward, than the actual women who've just given birth and who, for whatever reason, may not want a strange man in the next cubicle.

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

A) why did you post then?
B) you did ask how women felt sleeping there with dads around.

I posted because I was just thinking about how mothers felt sleeping in a bay with other men, it wasn't something that had occurred to me before.

Is that ok?

And you were told that they felt differently than if they were patients in a maternity ward. Is that OK? :)

Maybe you should have phrased it differently if you didn't want people to compare it. After all this is a thread about people in maternity wards.
And not only men staying there.

(Still in awe about how it got to female on male abuse)

Not teh menz. I care about women too who need their man for whatever reason

As I have said previously on this thread, my DH stayed with me as there was a recognised medical need (not a want, an actual need) for him to be with me which went far over usual post natal needs (absolutely not diminishing in any way). He has also stayed with me 24/7 when I've been in having all of my other surgeries and treatments.
We aren't in the UK, and where we are all hospital care is in private rooms. I would find it abhorrent to be on a ward regardless of whether peoples' partners or husband's were there, just the other women (patients) would, to me, be equally as bad.

Genuine question, does nobody else feel like this? That having anyone else listen to/witness your treatment is a gross breach of privacy. I realise that I am very lucky to live in a country with such good health care, but it wouldn't matter to me who they were, I still wouldn't want them in the same room as me.

Hellbeasts, I'd much rather be in my own room, but it would take massive investment in our health service, which isn't going to happen. Given the constraints placed by hospital infrastructure, I have no objections to other patients being in fairly close proximity. 24 hour visitors? No thanks.

I couldn't walk unaided after I had DS2. I'd gone into hospital in a wheelchair due to very severe SPD and shuffled about on crutches on the ward. I was only in one night and the midwives were great. I coped fine.

What I really don't get about this proposal is I go to to hospital on a regular basis. In the daycase unit I go to my DH is not allowed through the door because the other women are in gowns. (women aren't allowed in the men's bit either. So why is it ok that men can be in an area where women will be, at times, more exposed than they would be in a gown, for 24 hours a day?

TheMother - in the UK we have enough HCPs (in theory) for relatives not to be necessary to provide care. I cannot foresee any situation where there is a medical need for a particular person to be with a patient 24/7.

I assume you pay health insurance in whatever country you live in. It's free here. Private healthcare guarantees you a private room.

Re junkies on obs wards: my friend was in for several weeks in London in the run-up to her twins' birth, next to a woman who being kept in on methadone to stop her from resorting to street heroin. This woman was meeting her dealer daily in front of the hospital anyway. It does happen. Just imagine if the dealer had been visiting her at her bedside as well or even allowed to stay in with her... Would make for a great environment.

Genuine question, does nobody else feel like this? That having anyone else listen to/witness your treatment is a gross breach of privacy. I realise that I am very lucky to live in a country with such good health care, but it wouldn't matter to me who they were, I still wouldn't want them in the same room as me.

I agree Mother as I said upthread. I don't live in the UK at the moment, but I cannot believe that wards are still the norm there. Private rooms or twin rooms are the norm in most (all?) other developed countries where healthcare is also free at the point of delivery (e.g. continental Europe). The partners staying over is a red herring - the real scandal is Crimean facilities being misleadingly 'sold' as decent healthcare provision in 2015. The nonsense being spouted about the NHS reads more like Pravda every day.

It doesn't affect me in the least because (if IVF succeeds) I will be delivering privately in London. However, it upsets me a great deal that women are expected to put up with this in a supposedly rich nation. I am not particularly republican, but the image of Kate Middleton swanning out of the Lindo Wing while ordinary women just up the road sleep 22 to a room is like some Victorian nightmare.

The fact is that women who are about to/have just given birth are not necessarily ill, but are incapacitated and vulnerable, unlike their partners who are most often in the pink of health and under stress. These partners have no place occupying space in a hospital at night when the visiting hours are pretty relaxed in these services anyway. DD3 was in NICU for a week which at our hospital had unrestricted visiting hours for parents, so DH could see DD3 whenever he wanted (and did- he took to coming in at 11pm after the older children were in bed). For babies staying in for weeks or months, this kind of access is crucial.

For babies who are only staying in for a day or two, it's more of a luxury tbh. The mothers are only in to make sure they're not bleeding excessively, getting an infection or pre-eclampsia or to have their stitches checked, the babies to make sure all is well after the birth and to establish feeding. Most are only in for hours or a couple of days. Having the men there overnight is in my view unnecessary and is in fact a positive hindrance.

When I ran this idea past DH he looked horrified at the suggestion and said that at least one of the parents ought to be getting a decent night's sleep in anticipation of the baby coming home- not the angle I'd viewed it from but the same conclusion as me.

This woman was meeting her dealer daily in front of the hospital anyway. It does happen. Just imagine if the dealer had been visiting her at her bedside as well or even allowed to stay in with her... Would make for a great environment.

Exactly Duchesse. I think many of those who think this is a lovely idea must live in very naice areas. My friend was admitted to manage her breakthrough pain while dying of cancer and connected to a morphine pump. This was ripped out of her arm by a passing local junkie. Finding another vein in an end-stage cancer patient who is basically skin and bone is bloody difficult and painful. She died (still in pain) the following day.

Anyone want a toerag like that kipping next to their newborn? I would rather not and if that makes me "vile" I don't care.

Some post natal wards in this country are hell. I've never stayed more than 8 hours in one- always begged to go- but they are hell. MTV playing loudly, drunken partners popping in and out, rowing with the grandma, fighting with security, screaming on the phone. We need less people in them not more.

Exactly Expat I couldn't have said it better, some of the experiences on this thread are very eye opening, I didn't realise that UK healthcare was as horrific.

oddfodd nope, where we live healthcare is free and relatives aren't needed to assist with care.

I do think that some tolerance is needed for those who have unusual circumstances which others may find difficult to understand, sometimes a particular person is needed to be with the patient (as in my case), other people not understanding or having experienced such circumstances does not remove that medical need. In those cases why not just put the particular patient in a private room, surely that helps to avoid stress?

It's such a difficult situation, I had no idea it was that bad in the UK. for those who have suffered.

Meant to also say that yes Expat it does bring to mind images of army field hospitals, it sounds nightmarish.

I've stayed on a postnatal ward twice and on paeds lots of times. It feels totally different when you aren't the patient. I wasn't bleeding, leaking, in pain or on morphine. I wasn't trying to look after a newborn while feeling really ill myself. It wasn't exactly fun on the paeds ward but it was so much nicer than postnatal.

I also don't agree with the "most partners are nice and don't want to get in the way" school of thought. In my experience on the postnatal ward I encountered 2 who were abusive and a couple more who were just irritating. It was the other visitors who were worse and insensitive. I had one male visitor who put his head round all the closed curtains looking for his daughter. I was breastfeeding DS at the time. One lady's MIL kept taking the screaming newborn baby from her DIL and said "Give her here, she wants her nanna" when the poor lady was just trying to get her DD who had a forceps injury to latch on. One lady's baby was in scbu and her mum was making negative comments about the baby, saying how she thought he would die etc. The mum kept telling her to either be quiet or leave. I found this really upsetting as my DS was also in scbu with a similar problem. Other visitors were just generally celebrating loudly. Doesn't seem like much but when you're in agony and separated from your poorly baby, being surrounded by people for whom this is the best day of their lives and they are being noisy about it, it made me feel worse.

Oh God ellie, if you were at the JR last November, that may have been my dad. I was mortified, I'm so sorry. I did tell him off, but he's perpetually clueless.

I was a student midwife for a year several years ago and at our local hospital the maternity department was second only to A&E for the need to call security and/or the police to deal with problems, most of these problems came from partners and family not the pregnant women themselves.

Don't worry Starling, different hospital, different time. I wouldn't have minded so much if he'd looked embarrassed and quickly retreated. But he just stood there, had a really good look, with a head tilt just in case it wasn't obvious enough. My mum was really rude to a mum on the paeds ward when I was in with DS3. I wouldn't let her visit me or any of my dc in hospital after that.