the petition going round about dads in hospitals

[strawberryswizzler]

just me who is absolutely against this idea? i’ve had 2 c-sections. one emergency, one elective. could barely sit myself up to feed my baby nevermind walk properly etc, i felt so vulnerable. the thought of being in a 4 bed bay separated only by curtains with random men who could be anyone makes me feel ill. anyone else??

I have had help but unfortunately anxiety isn’t something you can just turn off. Why should I have to suffer in a stressful environment with no support because someone else could potentially have anxiety over my husband being there? Why does their anxiety trump mine and that of other women who feel they need their partners there? It goes both ways.

I needed and wanted my DH in the room but also I was also able to request a private room (public hospital with different room options)

Ahhh your terminology made me think you had misunderstood- banned, kicked out, abandoned.... ultimately dad's are 'visitors', when visiting is over they go home. I find your language quite hyperbolic.

You say your partner stayed, so I guess you will never know what would have happened had he gone home. It mightn't have been as bad as you fear.

My husband stayed with me as we birthed in a midwife led unit so were self sufficient in a private room. He slept the entire night, can't say he was of any benefit to me nor did I need him anyway - it just made sense as it was the middle of the night.

As a midwife, we occasionally have dads stay - eg if mum has a very serious mental health issue, triplets, etc - I've never say it benefit anyone personally. We only allow it in private rooms, to protect the other women.

There were few to no nurses when I had a caesarean. DH brought in decent food, stayed over to look after DS, all great. We had a private room, so we didn't have the noise and hassle of shared rooms. I did heel very vulnerable the few hours he wasn't there; I was doped up, exhausted, and it happened to be exactly when a stack of random students/ doctors/ midwives/ nurses decided to pop in and out while DS and I were trying to sleep; randomly sneaking in to pick up DS (discovered I could jump from sleep to standing really quickly with that one), taking my temperature while sleeping, filling in charts, measuring DS legs, taking my blood, temperature and blood pressure again.... So I think I can see both sides.

What women need iideally is private rooms, an expectation that someone will stay, and some sort of chart provided to explain who will pop in when. If they can't have private rooms then there need to be more nurses during properly scheduled rest times with no visitors (including doctors).

Allow female overnight visitors then. But no, that’s not allowed either and it’s not even up for debate. Seems to me, the powers that be (at my hospital at least!) are determined to make post-surgical-birth women suffer.

But I don't trust strange women just as much as I don't trust strange men. Would I rather DH was there to look after the baby so I could pop to the bathroom alone knowing she was safe, yes!

YANBU. I had an emergency c section with my first and my husband wasn’t there, no one gave me any help overnight. When I have my second, men will be allowed to come and go 24/7 on the postnatal ward but my husband will be at home with our toddler. I’ve asked every possibly relevant person at the hospital why I do not have the choice to be on a single sex ward, when I will be at my most vulnerable - not to mention shattered and recovering - they’ve all said basically that it’s tough, the blokes sign a form to say they won’t be a nuisance. One said they might make an allowance for someone with previous related trauma. I was fucking gobsmacked, so I have to disclose abuse for my feelings to be considered?

I don’t begrudge women wanting someone there for support. But why isn’t there a separate space on the ward? One space for the women who want to have random men inches from them in the middle of the night while they’re trying to establish breastfeeding and/or bleeding from their vagina following surgery or vagina birth, and one space for the women who don’t want twice the snoring, sweating, coughing, talking, sharing toilet & washing facilities etc etc right next to them overnight when the most important thing they need is rest. Our hospital has spent thousands in charity funds on comfy chairs for the partners, money that could have been spent on the umm mothers or their babies?? Birth partners were allowed on the postnatal ward (in my local hosp I mean) from 7am to 9pm previously, that’s when my husband came to have the baby so I could shower & sort my shit out, and even overnight without double the amount of people on the ward it was loud, smelly, & hot. 7am would come and the blokes would turn up loudly FaceTiming relatives, peeking behind the wrong curtains, using the loos for women - and don’t tell me staff should be stopping them because if there’s not enough staff to assist the mums overnight there’s not enough to police the bloody toilets is there?

Is there nowhere fucking left JUST for women?

edited to add - yes they have private rooms but they are reserved for poorly mums & babies

@GRex yes. And many hospitals have them, mine has eleven. They all sit empty… unless you’re happy to pay £700 per night 💰

Unfortunately you'll find even in women's wards there will occasionally be things with penises about unless you only want female staff too.

Don’t agree whatsoever. My husband was absolutely essential to me after the birth and I could not have cared for my twins without him present at all times. My husband and I, and other decent men, should not have to miss out because some men are shit.

@NotQuiteNorma they’re DBS checked though.

You would be surprised at the shit some men get up to when allowed to sleep over as visitors on hospital wards.

I used to be a paediatric nurse and one dad who stayed on the ward thought it was a good idea to pull the curtains round the bed his child was assigned to (child was not present but was having a procedure done) and have a wank. He thought he was being private but other parents overheard and we had to call the police in and get him removed.

Friends working on maternity wards have told me numerous cases of dads being allowed to stay, and as soon as the baby was born you could hear them pestering their poor partners for sex even though they've just given birth or had a C-section.

These are just some of the examples I can think of off the top of my head.

@Snowbear32 my jaw literally dropped reading that

Well exactly. Doctors/hospital staff are there because of their jobs and are vetted, @NotQuiteNorma birth partners (if the dad) are there because they got someone pregnant…

Some men annoying you doesn’t make it unsafe.

OK so say you are having your 2nd baby and DH needs to care for DC 1 - so he can't stay with you. There's random men next to your curtain on both sides, talking, snoring popping out to the loo etc. How's your anxiety now?

You would be surprised at the shit some men get up to when allowed to sleep over as visitors on hospital wards.

I wouldn't. Which is why I'm firm in my belief it's not a good solution on a ward.

Post natal wards are the pits. So many people, so much disruption, the constant bing bonging of the call bell. If dads are allowed to stay, they need to completely re-design the wards with properly partitioned cubicles, not just those flimsy blue curtains.

Having had an emergency c-section at 32 weeks and my baby whisked off to NICU after mere minutes of her birth, I’d have loved to have been able to have had my husband stay with me. I have never felt so scared and alone as I did at 2am, on my own on the postnatal ward, listening to other babies and mums, not knowing really where in the hospital my baby was nor if she would live. On top of that, midwives barely had any time to check on me, get me a drink, painkillers etc, let alone update me on my baby due to how busy they were so I was left, unable to move, completely on my own. What made matters worse was other people’s partners staying beyond the end of visiting hours.

I have no other situation to compare to and I think that’s what makes this such a tough debate as we all only see it from our own experiences. I can completely see why so many mums wouldn’t want men on the ward, and I may well have felt the same, but my goodness I wish so much they’d have been some space in the hospital for those of us who did need our partners. Sadly, most hospitals are too busy/small/whatever to tailor to both sides and so in reality, it’ll likely end up mums like me who are left isolated as we are more likely the minority.

8 women sharing a ward after giving birth sounds like torture, never mind all of the men loitering around. This isn’t the norm in the rest of Europe.
As I’ve only given birth outside of the Uk I was completely ignorant to what’s going on in the NHS before reading this thread.

Partner were allowed overnight when I had mine but had to sign a long list of rules - including no snoring or they'd be woken/ask to leave and no sitting/lying on the beds. I stayed in two nights with the second - my husband did actually go home from 10-7ish but most women had a partner there and it was totally fine. All were respectful. Snoring was from a mum, the dads helped with their babies. I kept my curtains closed but on the one occasion no staff member was responding to me for over 15 mins I asked one of them for help through the curtain and he helped me.

If I'd had to stay in another night, my husband would have stayed.

Ideally staffing would be able to cover helping with the babies more but until that happens I think partners should be able to stay.

No. It’s a hospital not a hotel and the ladies need women only spaces at night.
I was offered to have my baby in the nursery for a few hours to help me out to get some rest. Far more helpful than having random men around.

@menopausalmare exactly.

Everyone can hear everything that's going on. Nurses asking about stitches, lochia, bowel movements, nipples. Waddling to the toilet. It's grim.

It's a hard no from me.

One man, helping one woman but making another two or three women feel uncomfortable with his presence means the man shouldn't be there.

Unfortunately due to the dire state of our maternity system you get the bed you are given (obviously medical needs are taken into consideration when you are placed in postnatal and women with higher medical needs are placed in certain bays) so there is no way a bay for women and their DP's could ever really work.

Those who "want" their DP's with them in post natal need to be fair to the other women they are sharing their space with and realistic about the space constraints of postnatal wards.

Those who "need" their DP's with them is more of a grey area but ultimately their care should be provided by the HCP's.

The only time I wanted someone removed from the postnatal ward was the woman beside me (bays separated by curtains) and her mother literally bellowing in conversation through the early hours while I tried to sleep. Mother stumbled through the curtains at one point as she wasn't paying attention to where she was going and muttered "sorry" while shuffling away.
The midwives politely asked them to calm down and be quieter numerous times but they kept yelling. I really wished the mother had been told to leave, I heard the other woman on the ward pointedly sighing and complaining about the neverending racket.