To think paediatric ward should be better equipped for bed sharing?

[Franklepopper]

I’m in hospital with my poorly 1 year old. The care we’re getting is great but the parent bed is a narrow fold down affair with a gap between it and the wall.
AIBU to think that poorly children are likely to want to bedshare with their grownups and that the beds could have been thought about a bit more to make this possible?
I might be delusional but I have had 30min a sleep so far all night…

My son was I hospital a lot as an infant toddler. Sometimes I slept in his bed, sometimes I didn't. It made absolutely no difference to night time monitoring, for those imagining it would

In the UK a parent will always be able to stay with their child. (With the exception of NICU, SCBU and maybe some PICUs)

OP with your child being 1 I guess they have given a cot for them? Can you ask for it to be changed for a normal bed then you can sleep in it with them? I have seen this done before. I’m a neonatal nurse but have helped out on the Childrens ward occasionally. Hope your LO is feeling better soon.

Just wanted to add that all this ‘cross contamination’ and ‘what about observations’ is rubbish. She is the child’s mother and clearly bed shares at home. It’s wholly different to visiting your granny in hospital and sitting on their bed.

Also, if the child is so upset because she’s over tired and not able to sleep alone in the cot the nurses will find it impossible to take observations anyway, it’s much easier to count the respiratory rate of a sleeping child than one who is screaming!

If the child has multiple lines/iv infusions and monitors ect then yes it may not be possible to bed share but then again if the are so distraught then they are likely to tear out their lines and knock off the monitors anyway.

OP ask for an adult bed in place of the cot.

My friend slept in a chair for 6 weeks while her DS was ill she said it was hell.

Sent too soon. Eventually she got a bed next to him as he was moved to a room to himself.

Key worker is right.

From a parental point of view I understand completely and have inwardly bemoaned the same thing when hospitalised with my own co-sleeping babies / toddlers.

However as a nurse I fully understand that it is neither safe nor practical in the ward environment, and in the event of resuscitation / emergency interventions being required (often very unpredictably) precious seconds and minutes would be lost moving a sleeping parent off the bed / moving the patient to a room with sufficient space for a whole resuscitation team to gather round.

Co-sleeping has been a lifeline to me as a parent, but even in a totally well child it comes with risks, and in my nursing career I have seen some horrendously sad cases of it going ‘wrong’ in the home environment and I will never forget them.

When my LO was in hospital as a 2 year old I asked for her cot to be swapped to a bed and had the sides up as a previous poster did. Bit more space than on the adult pull-down. We felt really well looked after on that stay actually.
Hope your little one is feeling better OP.

Where I live (Singapore) our local hospital has fantastic high sided single (or a bit larger than a standard single) beds in the paediatric wards, which are perfect for safe cosleeping. They feel a bit like a cage when you are inside but you can drop the sides to get out. They expect that you will stay overnight with your child, and it’s set up to allow you to do so. There’s also a visitor bed if you want to sleep separately. This hospital has private single rooms so a bit different to the U.K. but I think overall a very sensible set up.

Parents aren’t allowed in the patients bed for infectious reasons so it won’t happen. Unfortunately getting little sleep is part and parcel of it. Do hope your DC is better soon

What Keyworker says matches my experience.

My child was in a cot but there was a fold down bed in the room and that was where we slept together once there was no longer a need to be hooked up to monitors, oxygen etc

I was a nurse nurse on a paediatric ward. It depends if there an adult bed available or just a cot. I did have a child who had previously fallen out of the bed at home and hd a fractured skull. Mum took him out of the cot at hospital and put him in the parent pull down bed with her and he fell out again. The amount of issues that caused was unbelievable. In the end they had to be moved to a bigger paediatric hospital for further treatment of his now quite severe head injury.

After that we had a blanket ban on bed sharing and my manager would actively go in and stop it

. Makes no difference to me doing obs overnight. But if they're on pumps, oxygen etc it can be tricky and as pp mentioned resuscitation is extremely difficult whilst you're getting the parent to get out of the bed

Agree. My daughter was hospitalised only for a few days when she was 13 months, and ubsurprisingly they expected her to sleep in a cot. Zero chance this was going to happen- baby had spent the last 13 mo this staunchly refusing to go in a cot!

The nurses were really good about it in our case though, they just moved us to a ward with older children and full sized beds, and let me lie with her (even though she had an IV in).

DD spent a lot of time in the local children's hospital when she was small. At that age she was in a cot. The wards had Z beds for the parents. DD was always hooked up to various monitors etc so bed sharing wouldn't have been an option anyway.

My DD spent a lot of time in and out of hospital last year and on each admission, I had to sign a document to say I wouldn’t bed share and that if I did i it was at my own risk, they were definitely discouraging it.

Ds has spent a lot of time in hospital over the years. I have slept in the bed with him before now (well slept would be an exaggeration!) when he needed it to help him settle.

Nope, it’s a nightmare from a logistical and liability point of view.

If the child has multiple lines/iv infusions and monitors ect then yes it may not be possible to bed share but then again if the are so distraught then they are likely to tear out their lines and knock off the monitors anyway.

Rubbish, if they are like this they get splinted with hand covers. Lots of kids who aren’t distraught think it’s natural to pull out/off lines and monitoring, it’s just what many kids do as the norm so that’s dealt with. You just have to feed them and help them drink which is not a biggie.

When my son was in hospital he had a standard bed so I just slept with him, they attempted to stop it on the first night. When he was still screaming at 4am, being sick and getting hot (from screaming) and none of the other children or parents had been able to get any sleep they changed their minds. He was asleep within minutes.

Where he was they had the beds that folded out from the wall, not only was it extremely narrow (narrower than my shoulders!), we were on an end, and twice nurses tripped over it as they walked into the cubicle at night as they had to enter the cubicle on the side of the pull down bed.

I should imagine it's because on the whole people are idiots.

Of you accommodate parents witha. Ned, you'll always get those people that insist on having both parents there, those who want meals too, those who bother the staff every other moment because they think their kid needs something, those who treat it like a hotel.

I’ve voted yabu despite being a bedsharer at home. The parents beds aren’t really designed for a good nights sleep (neither is the ward), you’re there for extra support for your child but they need to be in a hospital bed.

Our hospital has strict signs about parents not sleeping in the hospital bed, but when my eldest had his tonsils out at 5 he woke in the early hours, I got up next to him to settle him, fully intending to get out again when he was sleeping. The nurse came round and caught me at about 6am, and she was so lovely. I immediately sprang up to get out of bed, but she just said stay, he’s peaceful.

But being in bed with him wouldn’t have been ok if he was hooked up to monitoring machines.

It would be hard to whizz a double bed down the corridors to resus in an emergency ...

The poster who said because people are idiots is right. For every lovely mum who pops in to soothe and feed their baby there'll be a belligerent dad who's come to the hospital straight from the pub or other kind of twat. You have to actually force people to put their child, the patient, first at times I imagine.

They were encouraging about it in my case, so maybe they were able to find some flexibility in the “give em an inch and they’ll take a mile” type policy.

To be clear, yet again, at no point was i in the patient’s bed (it was a cot with bars so it wouldn’t have been possible)

One of mine was given a single bed so we just slept in that together with the sides up. Was fine.

My dd2 was in hospital last year and there were signs all over the ward telling parents not to bed share....I can't now remember what the reasons were as I don't and wouldn't bed share anyway. Dd sleeps much better in her bed.

My little brother spent much of his childhood in hospital, he was on a long time childrens ward but there was no facility for sleeping. My mum spent weeks on the arm chairs

When I was in overnight with my DS they had run out of beds for parents. I sat in a chair for a bit and then the nurse suggested I share DS's bed. He didn't have any drips etc though.