To have been sharp with this dad on the postnatal ward

[Azaeli]

Visited my friend in hospital yesterday, she'd had a difficult birth the day before, was very tired and emotional.
The woman in next bed had her husband and 3 older kids visiting (ages 2-10). They were very noisy, kids running riot, shrieking, shouting and peeking round curtains while my friend was trying to BF
After an hour of this I went up to the dad and told him sharply to keep the noise down and get kids under control, said this is a hospital ward and other women are trying to rest/sleep. He responded that his kids are excited to meet their new baby sister but agreed to try and keep them quiet.

Half an hour later they were even louder, chasing up and down squealing. My friend was tearful as she wanted to rest and was upset by the racket. I collared the dad again and said the noise was unacceptable and if he couldn't keep his kids quiet he needed to take them off the ward. He muttered about it being 'visiting time' but took the kids out.

Was I BU? I feel a bit uneasy about it now but I remember the same thing happening when I'd just given birth (only being too sore and tired to do anything about it!) Would you have said anything?

Sparklingbrook maybe one time in a thousand it'll get you a thump but you can't live life expecting the worst. Otherwise everybody will be too scared to say anything to people behaving unreasonably or thoughtlessly and they'll just carry on. That's not a world I want to live in.

But I've never been thumped so far!

I would rather not risk it Magical if that's ok.

OP if I'd been your friend I would have wept in gratitude for having a word with the dad.

And if I'd been the mother of the feral children I would have been mortified (and wondering why I'd had kids with such a wimp of a dad who couldn't get them to behave with some decency)

Hope your friend is recovering well and out of hospital - or if she's still in, that the Clampetts have sodded off!

I am currently on a postnatal ward and totally sympathise. OP sounds like a great friend and does she hire out?

YANBU. At all. Far too many people think it's ok to treat the postnatal ward, a place that is only needed when either mother or baby is too unwell to be discharged, as some kind of fucking party.

Also, I think people are mixing up whether hospital staff should be dealing with this as it's part of their duty of care (yes) with whether they're actually in reality able to due to understaffing (often no). Unfortunately, those things aren't mutually exclusive.

I would rather not risk it Magical if that's ok.

And if he HAD thumped the OP, in front of a ward full of witnesses - the police would be called and he would be prosecuted.

Yanbu

The dad was obviously being a pretty thoughtless idiot.

Nurses and midwives are busy enough without having to deal with crap like this.

YANBU. I was in for over a week with DS5. DH would bring the older 4 in for 5-10 mins every day after school. Would have liked to see them longer but the 3 year old would get bored after that. On the last 2 days the lady in the next bed's DH brought their dcs (aged 6 and 8) to visit and stayed for the full 3 hours of visiting time each time. They were both bored and whinging to go home but the dad kept telling them that visiting time was 3 hours and they were going to stay for 3 hours. They were both making a lot of noise. The girl went into some of the other womens cubicles, peered at the babies and then loudly told her mum that their baby was cuter than all the others. The boy just wandered around getting in the way of everyone. Very annoying, especially when my dc and dh only visited very briefly (and stayed in my cubicle) so they didn't disturb anyone. I wish I'd felt well enough to tell the dad to take his dc home.

Sparklebrook is there anything for which you would 'risk' standing up to somebody about?

I'll have a think Magical.

Good for you OP, new mums in hospital nowadays have my sympathies.

40 years ago when I had DD1, visiting was twice a day for an hour for dads only ("on their way to work and on their way home")

No children under 12, even your own.

Other family members (and well-behaved friends) 2 max to a bed from 2.30 pm for an hour Wednesdays and Sundays only. And they had to speak quietly or they would have been evicted by the ward sister (and NO sitting on the bed!)

In postnatal ward for at least 5 days, an hour's sleep after lunch and babies fed every three or four hours - and amazingly they all slept at the same time in between feeds.

Babies in nursery overnight.

Not at all conducive to breastfeeding but a haven of rest.

You fricking don't have to suck up other people's children peeking around the curtains and treating the ward like a playground when you're sitting there tearful and vulnerable having just given birth. Why does a woman in that situation have to tolerate and sympathise with stress, inconvenience and invasion through someone else's lousy parenting when damn all consideration is being shown to her?

Well done OP.

Yes but how uncomfortable once the OP and man/children has gone the mans lady is then in the next bed to her. It could led to her being there alone and getting a come back from it on another visiting time making for an even more horrible time of it. If your going to say something perhaps be more diplomatic rather than "telling off" which will automatically get someone's back up. Ideally staff should be informed.
I remember being in a noisy ward unable to sleep after having a baby they are kind of like that in hospital.

op your friend did the right thing and hospital admin shd assign security to deal with visitors breaching visiting rules. If your friend has the time, ask her to write out that suggestion and put it in the complaints box.

YANBU being on the post natal ward is intrusive enough without heads peeping round curtains. The lady next to me had four noisy kids it was awful.