To think the WEP should not be campaigning for men to be allowed to stay overnight on postnatal wards?

[CallaLilli]

I was just having a look at some of the objectives for the WEP and noticed they have a Stand Up for Dads campaign. Now whilst I agree with a lot of what they say on that page, one of the things they say is:

“hospitals don’t seem to take dads seriously. Many treat new fathers and new co-parents as visitors who have to stick to visiting hours or at best sleep in a chair. All new mums should be allowed a partner with them 24-7 if they choose.”

Countless women on MN have spoken of their experiences on postnatal wards and the majority of them have said that they would not want men staying on the ward 24/7, at a time when they feel at their most vulnerable. Am I BU to think that a party set up for women should be more considerate of what women want?

From an infection control POV I don't think having partners there is a good idea.

I have covered as a cleaner on postnatal wards, and we start pretty early to try and get the bay's done before partners, doctors and other HCP come and also the bastard bounty lady.

I really can't see how the wards with be able to keep up the level of cleanliness when there is no room to do the job.

Well congrats to you for coping so well after labour, others don't and if having my dp on the ward all night makes me selfish/unreasonable then so be it!

It does, yes. Maybe, if YOU need that level of support, YOU'D be better off with a home birth.

It's not always the case you're in because you need to be. There's the baby check after a few hours. If you deliver after round times then you are bunched together in early rounds the next day. You're in hospital because your child cannot yet be discharged. Twice that has been the case for me.

Some women don't have partners though, Mumma, or their partners are unable to stay over as they have other children to look after at home. Why should those women have to stay in a room full of men? The men are not patients, the women and babies are.

I was lucky to not have needed a c section or epidural, I had a fairly straightforward VB.
But in our hospital women who had had c sections or other complications which affected their mobility were given private rooms until they were back on their feet, when they were moved to the ward. I realise other people have had worse experiences after birth and have had to cope on a ward from the off, which must be hard. Really they should be getting the help and support from the midwives during the night, in an ideal world.

Well sadly guajira 'so be it' is the attitude of most most extremely selfish people.

What about the women struggling to breast feed their babies who are made uncomfortable and stressed by the presence of your partner, just because you can't manage on your own for a couple of days.
Or the women who have their fundamental right to dignity and privacy breached because you want someone with you 24/7.

Yes women have a baby to look after as well as recovering - but the solution is not to invade others privacy - it is to provide better post natal care - that is where discussion should be directed.
The fact is that those women who are being kept awake all night by partners playing phone games, being noisy and selfish also have baby to look after - why is their need for peace and privacy less than that of women who feel they need their partners there to look after them? I've been in hospital a lot - many many times - for serious illness and surgery - I'd say the percentage of decent to inconsiderate visitors is about 50/50.

Many people happily ignore rules and conditions and think they only apply to others, the are loud, they do not respect privacy - they disturb people trying to sleep, basically make things very stressful. That's why they aren't allowed to stay all the time. They have little concept of the medical and care needs of vulnerable people and consequently their behaviour is often found wanting.

It's not really the case of saying yes or no.

New policies will have to be drawn up. Most important ones I can think of is fire safety and infection control.

Then the provision of toilets and showers for the partners.

The WEP campaign isn't about the few days after childbirth. Their equality mission is about getting fathers to take on as much responsibility for babies and children as mothers do. They see the lack of involvement in pre- and post-natal care as a significant road block to increasing that engagement and thereby removing the burden of child rearing (but not the joy of it) from its current default at the feet of women.

So improving post-natal care, while also laudable, isn't the aim of the WEP's campaign and does nothing to address the problems they are trying to address with it.

Women who want their partners there 24/7 can either pay for a private room with en suite, or recognise the limitations of our overstretched NHS and accept that it's not feasible.

There must be better things to be campaigning about.

The problem with that boomboom is that their idea of how to achieve their aims would involve shitting all over quite a lot of women. And it's not as if there's any evidence that dads who stay over in the hospital are more engaged, or take on any more of the responsibility for children anyway. That's just guesswork. You should need a helluva lot more than a wild stab in the dark to be advocating for something that will put a small but significant number of women at actual risk, cause upset and trauma for plenty more whilst at their most vulnerable and might, in the worst case scenario, be used as an excuse for cutting staff on already overstretched wards. And if they're not trying to improve postnatal care, they bloody should be.

I'm another one who was subjected to an abusive partner visiting another mother in a ward. He went into the bathroom, yes, the one we were all using, and stayed and stayed and stayed. Because he was using it to do drugs. He then kicked off in the room and the police had to haul him out. It was absolutely terrifying to be in that situation and I would not have wanted to spend the night with him.

BoomBoom - the WEP policy states:

^New fathers and same-sex partners are not “visitors” on a labour
or post-natal ward, but new parents who should be permitted to
be with their partner and new child at all times, if their partner
chooses. WE will require all hospitals to adopt this approach.^

so it's a fundamental part of their 'getting dads involved' campaign.

It's horribly misguided and - like a lot of things that WEP advocates in its policies - very poorly thought through.

I'm rescinding my membership.

I was upset when I was told DP couldn't stay with me and had to go home. I'd had a c section and was very tired. This wasn't helped by having to feed every 1 and a half hours and then call the midwife to me every hour after I'd fed meaning I got no real sleep.

The odd thing was is that I paid for a private room so DP wouldn't have disturbed anyone.

Imagine the italics in my post (honestly why is MN so behind the curve on simple things like formatting? Does my head in :o )

My ex was there looking after baby one on the first day as I was too ill, it didn't stop him fucking off after an ow abandoning his children years later. Some Men only care about those they live with, anyone outside their home and work life is not important to them. Staying in a maternity unit for a week posturing on social media, won't change that.

Legally only married men has automatic PR.

Before the baby is registered then partners have no legal rights to the child. Has not got any legal rights to make decisions on the baby medical care if needed.

If this was to go ahead then these details need to be thought out.

Fanny I agree that's a problem. But the harms that people are spouting on this thread are also not backed up by research. They are expectations based on people's understanding of how the world works and anecdotal evidence. Which is just what the WEP's campaign is. I don't see that either side has a monopoly on the truth on this. We just don't know what the full impact of the policy would be.

YANBU.

After Dc2 I was stuck on a horrible, huge ward (at least 16 beds) for days.

I'd had a c section and there were men there all the fucking time. I had to hobble to the toilet at the other end of the ward, holding a tiny newborn, bleeding and in agony, sweating,in my nightdress, and
There would be these idiots standing around blathering to each other and drinking coffee.

They kept me awake at night snoring and talking. They used the toilet and there were only 2 toilets for the whole wars.

It was intrusive, rude, upsetting and invasive.

In the end I discharged myself and the baby after 2 nights even though the baby had jaundice and I was not really well enough to go home either. I just couldn't stand another night in that environment.

This is another example of the WEP not listening to or caring about what actual women actually want.

Which harms do you mean? There are women talking about things that have happened to us because of men being allowed to stay overnight, or men not being allowed to stay overnight but causing harm in the limited hours they were there for. I assume what you mean is that these are anecdotes and we don't know how prevalent they are, which is true. But the point is, for some of us the fact that they exist at all is a problem. And even anecdotes are still more evidence than the theory that men being allowed to stay overnight will lead to greater engagement. There's literally no evidence for that at all, whereas we have some evidence about what happens when men do stay over, the issue is simply how representative it is.

Dh stayed when I had ds1. I had a private room and a CS. I had been stuck all night in agony the first night, half off the bed. I was in so much pain I couldn't move. I'd been trying to reach a crying D's but got in an awkward position and couldn't reach my buzzer.

The next day the ward staff seemed oblivious to the fact that I'd had a section. DH refused to leave me for the second night.

I'm in favour of men in private rooms. Wards not so much. It is different in a shared space.

but WHY aren't the WEP concerned with better postnatal or peri-natal care? This is a key issue that is affects women.

I don't believe, by the way, that the reasons why men do not engage with traditional women's work is because they find it hard to access. I do not believe that they don't do much childcare, much housework, much laundry, much present-buying, much play-date-organising, much liaising with the school*, much making of Nativity costumes, much chatting with old people, much cooking, much food-buying, much collecting of parcels from the post office - I, personally, as an unscientific article of faith, do not happen to believe that what prevents men from doing these things is that they cannot get close enough to the physical circumstances of these events. (I do not guard the washing machine from my partner. I do not guard my children's finger nails from him and prevent him from cutting them. Do other women?)

So, as this is my personal belief position, I do not believe that inviting men to loiter around broken, bleeding, tearful, half-dressed women is the way to get them to start doing any of these things. If they wanted to do these things, they would do them already.

Why do we want men to take part in what women do? Why not just make it decent for women to do it and then we needn't give a shit about whether men deign to acknowledge the existence of such work.

• what about paying caring, well.
• what about free, comfortable, heated, cool laundrettes with a subsidised bar and a restaurant and wifi so you could go there and get some work done and take clean washing home with you.
• what about free nursery nurses and round the clock domestic support for breastfeeders with other children
• what about clean, safe, private peri-natal care, properly staffed, with all the time and help you need to recover from childbirth and get to know your new baby, and breastfeed if you like

Funny how the last point looks about as unlikely as the first three

• it is actually the case in this particular one - liaising with the school - that our school at least makes it FIENDISHLY difficult and perhaps in cases where there does happen to be a SAHM it is easier for her to do this one. In cases where both parents WOH then it is pure laziness, as usual, that means that it is usually the mother who constantly has to keep her ear to the ground on social media, and suck up to other parents as much as possible in an attempt to stay in the on dit loop and have a chance of their kid being in the right place at the right time. Men can't be arsed dicking about "liking" other people's babies on Facebook just so that someone will tell them where the coaches are going to drop the kids off after the school trip

The only way this should be allowed is if every mother has her own room. Men should absolutely not be allowed to stay on wards. I would have discharged myself if this was allowed.

Agreed.

Here in the US every woman gets her own recovery room where her baby stays in the room with her. So DH was allowed to sleep in the recovery room with me and help take care of DD when she cried at night by bringing her to me or rocking her to sleep while I rested. It was a very relaxing family bonding time for us.

But I would not want strangers in my recovery room, regardless of gender after giving birth. So, anyone spending the night would should be disallowed.

No way should the over-stretched NHS have to facilitate partners staying over. Pay for a private room! The NHS is clear on single sex accomodation in hospitals, why should this be any different? Women are no longer kept in hospital because they've only given birth, they are there for medical reasons. Pre-natal and post-natal birth is another kettle of fish and it has a long way to go.

Sorry that should be; 'only' given birth.....because I recognise that it's a trauma in itself.

I will never forget after having DC1 and struggling after birth having to put up with a naice family popping champagne loudly over the curtain from me in the postnatal ward. There were loads of them you'd have thought it was NYE the way they were behaving. I'm thankful they were not staying overnight.

I would have loved DH to stay with me overnight but considering I didn't even like sharing a ward with other women I'd have hated their partners to be there as well! I was on a busy, noisy ward with women who had to be told to keep the noise down as they were chatting loudly into the early hours. It'd have been fucking awful with a bunch of partners there as well.

I really think this is a crap thing to be campaigning for. There are much more worthy issues.