Partners sleeping on maternity ward?

[Jaaxe]

I’m due a csection in December, it’s not my first csection so I know birth recovery especially csection isn’t a walk in the park with a newborn and that having your partner in the hospital is helpful and good for bonding but aibu to think partners shouldn't be allowed to stay overnight to sleep in the bays alongside all the other female patients overnight? A side room is fine with me but a bay with other female patients at their most vulnerable, no thanks. I think the flexible visiting during the day is great but having partners camped next to your bed with just a curtain between is a no from me. Aibu?

So I’d be persona non grata, as after both mine my husband stayed in with me the whole 3 and 4 nights. The head matron could not guarantee 1:1 care and with a stress induced seizure disorder, childbirth was going to contain all my triggers… I did seize and have absences in labour ward. I was also a known flight risk, escaped off both a neurology and neuropsych (locked) ward in the years previous to my first Dd being born. We were in a side room, my husband barely left the room apart from to take DD down for tests/antibiotics because I couldn’t push her in the bassinet as could barely walk prior and post birth due to severe spd. My mum would sit with me during the day for 8 hours and my husband would go for a sleep. My mums not well enough to do a waking night shift.

not everyone needs are the same, and thus I don’t feel a blanket ban on partners being them male, female is sensitive or sensible to patients needs. I agree more single rooms are needed to give family units what they need. Plus some of the worst snorers I know are women! What we need is more choice and the ability to make informed choices.

I can see both sides but it would be hypocritical of me to say ban men when my children and I benefited so greatly from my husband being with us.

Improve maternity services. Make midwifery a more appealing career choice so there’s more of them to deliver care. We’re bleeding midwives in our area; our midwife led unit has recently been permanently closed.

On the contrary, imo if you want your partner to stay you should be the ones to pay for a private room.

What amazes me is how many people on here were able to tell the difference between day and night in the first days after childbirth 😅

@BlueBellsArePretty

get real… the men on the ward aren’t caring for the child. If the baby cries the mothers instinct is to wake up anyway she isn’t going to sleep through that when her protective hormones are kicking in. And maternity wards aren’t there to take baby away to let mum sleep. It’s to get mum and baby bonding and mum used to caring for her newborn whilst keeping a medical eye on them to make sure baby is thriving and mum is ok. If she hasn’t slept at night then dad can watch baby for a couple of hours during visiting time to let her snooze. If she is breast feeding he can’t do feck all anyway. He doesn’t need to sit there all night on Facebook waiting for his chance to show what a hero he is. Because we all know who ends up doing the night feeds once they go home anyway cos we have been on this site for years.

women have been doing this on their own for centuries and only 30 years ago you stayed in hospital for a week without your man. Now it’s only one or 2 days. Heck in them days you even gave birth without the man present and many women say it was much better for it.

Ex midwife and had 3 c-sections and I don't think men should be allowed to stay. It's uncomfortable and unfair for other women. I think you should have to book a private room if you want a partner to stay.

No, not keen on the idea of women at their most vulnerable surrounded by male strangers. I would have hated that. Unpopular opinion but I’m also not a fan of male midwives/drs/staff for birth either, particularly if the woman has no choice in the matter.

I do get the point about understaffed postnatal units though. In an ideal world this wouldn’t be an issue and there would also be more private rooms if partners did wish to stay.

Had my 2nd baby during covid. C-sec (planned), husband wasn’t allowed to stay, only allowed short visits. I was on a ward, with four beds, but only one other new mother.

I found midwives and hcps very attentive and quick to respond to buzzer. My baby and I had a lovely quiet time together.

I’ve had fertility treatment, a gnarly first birth and have pretty much no dignity left generally, but even I was relieved that there weren’t many people around when I managed to stand up post-epidural and about a pint of blood fell out of me on to the ward floor. Don’t even think my own husband would have been ok with that let alone a stranger’s husband 😆

I see both sides. It should be a safe space for women, on the other hand I don't know how I would have tended to my babies following my csections without someone to hand the baby to me every time. I couldn't even sit up.

The answer is private rooms for everyone or better nurse to patient ratios.

We should be mad at the government for creating this situation, not other families

I believe partners should be allowed. My husband was a real help after my c section and I wouldn't want it any other way. The other men were with their partners and not lurking around pestering other new mums!

In the maternity unit I work in, partners are only allowed to stay overnight if they are in a single room. Our hospital is modern though, with mostly single rooms, and we only really need to use the bay if we’re REALLY busy! 😅 Other than that, the only other place with a bay is the maternity HDU for post c-section, PPH patients etc and if it’s quiet we usually let partners stay a little later, e.g. midnight/1am, but they can’t stay overnight as 1) it’s too small and 2) we could get an admission overnight in which case they’d be turfed out! 😂 Maybe you could book a mat unit visit before you’re due so you can ask some questions? Or maybe your community midwife will be able to answer them? Good luck 😊

I had a C Section last November and partners were allowed in for an hour a day, no other visitors. Partners have never been allowed to stay over in our trust. Of course I'd have loved DH with me but I agree with you, I wouldn't want lots of random men about so I don't think men should be allowed to stay over night. No way.

Now imagine how you would have coped as a lone parent.

Postnatal wards have to be safe for ALL women.

Women with high care needs, women without partners, women with violent and abusive partners.

It's not selfish to expect a decent level of care from midwives and nurses. It's not selfish to expect a ward free from random blokes (some of whom will be predatory) while we are at our most vulnerable.

It is selfish to expect a ward full of women to put up with your nice Nigel, just because you think he's nice.

For a normal postnatal ward there is still a lot to do. As a midwife on an average shift I have 6 women and 6 babies - on a bad shift I could have 10. Medication rounds. Let's say 3 minutes per person extra if IV drugs. 15 minutes every 4 hours. Initial postnatal check on mum and baby at least 15 minutes. Observations every 2 hours for half those babies for regular stuff like meconium or GBS. That's around 5 minutes every 2 hours per baby more if baby needs blood sugars. That half the women need bloods, 10 minutes per person. Documentation for each person probably 20 minutes. Breastfeeding support is a lot. That's probably 3 hours of each shift. If a woman or baby becomes unwell it totally derails any other care. Discharges are probably about 30 minutes each (We do also discharge at night if they want to leave) New admission about 25 minutes for handover and 1st check. Bleeping Dr's and getting reviews. Acting as a chaperone for Dr's. Catheters and bladder care. That is before all thr questions everyime you go in to see anyone. Which is fine but takes a lot of time. There actually is never enough time. I rely on students and HCAs to scrape through. To others, it may seem we aren't doing much, but I promise you we aren't sitting there eating cake...I often don't get a break. The reason I only do bank shifts there and work full time on a birth centre.

What she said.

Tbh I'm not sure what all of you think you're achieving by being so condescending, dismissive and unpleasant. Not standing up for vulnerable women so I really wish you'd stop pretending that was it (while simultaneously being so nasty to women who are vulnerable in ways that are ideologically inconvenient to you). A female only ward without my partner was not a safe space for me. He was the only one caring for me and the newborn baby.

Tell ya what, I'll put it out there: I care as much about your wants as you care about mine. I couldn't care less how you feel about my partner being there, just as you couldn't care less about how much I was suffering and my newborn baby crying. You are happy to leave a newborn baby crying for over an hour (that's how long the midwife took to respond when I pushed the button). I am not. Happy to ageee to disagree. Not so happy with you arguing to strip away women's support systems when they need it most because it inconveniences you.

1st child stayed 6 days, no men fine experience.
2nd child, 6 men, TWENTY DAYS.if youd given me a gun. Or better still rocket launcher id have happily used it 😡
Loud,unreasonable rude, disruptive, disrespecting vulnerable women's dignity in intimate moments,invading their private space often when not clothed. Kick them out!

When I had #1 in 2005, partners were kicked out of the ward at 8pm. Of course, that didn't mean they had enough midwives to help. I had a C-section and was on magnesium sulphate. I was truly not capable of caring for dd and the postnatal care was truly appalling: I was left alone holding a newborn for hours.

You can't solve one problem without the other. It's all well and good to say "your needs shouldn't come before theirs" but the system has been designed so the needs of the patients are in conflict. There's one group of women who need privacy and one who need support, and rather than provide either proper staffing or private rooms, the powers that be have decided to let everyone suffer. It's not possible to answer this question because everyone is right.

I have had 4 babies by C Section
Not once did my Husband stay with Me.
Why would He?
Glad I had my last 18 years ago.
This is crazy . YANBU OP

When I was on the postnatal ward with DS, there was 1 midwife for 18 women. I was perfectly capable after an easy birth but others on the ward needed actual care post c section and were unable to get any help. You can’t not have partners without having enough staff, I’d prefer more staff but the likelihood is it’s only going one way. In my area, one hospital allows partners and has different postnatal wards for those with and without partners so that could be an option. Mine didn’t but was grossly understaffed.

I don't think that lone women who don't have partners there should be expected to deal with the intrusion of having other people's partners around when they are in a vulnerable state and have no one to advocate for them.

Surely it should be possible to designate bays on the ward as being 'partner' or 'non-partner', and try as far as possible to allocate women according to their preference. Of course, it would be impossible always to respect this during busy periods but that's the case with all maternity services (home birth, birth centre, birthing pool etc. are all dependent on availability). Given that there usually seems to be a fairly even split on this issue though, it should be possible to give more women what they want by saying that partners are allowed on some bays but not others.

If you need help and the hospital can't provide it then you don't really have much choice. Other women tutting about it is the least of your concerns when you have a baby to look after and can barely lift your arm.

Patients should come first, not visitors. We do all pay through our national insurance.

There are loads of threads on this already. I had mine before covid and my DP stayed the first night. I had emergency epidural, stitches, catheter, couldn't move so I needed his help. He didn't want to stay the other nights and I struggled but other dad's were there and it didn't bother me. I had the curtains closed most of the time as lo was always feeding from me. There aren't enough staff to give you one to one care and are limited siderooms.

This sums up exactly the problem. If you had any other type of hospital stay then you would be cared for by nurses. Why is maternity so shit that relatives have to do the work of the hospital?