40 years ago parents didn't stay with unwell babies?

[UndertheCedartree]

Am I right in thinking that 40 years ago if a baby was taken to the big city hospital (from being born at the local town hospital i.e critically ill/likely to die) that the parents and definitely the dad did not go with them?

It happened to me so I was wondering how widespread it was.

Certainly. I know a 45 year old who was born premature. His mother left him in the hospital care to go home and care for her other young children. She expressed her milk and sent it by plane and it was collected and used by nurses at hospital!

I’ll just add he is a well
adjusted adult and father!

I don’t think nowadays I can imagine doing it but that was back then.

Also my sister of a similar age broke her arm at 3 and was in hospital alone, quite happy as my mum was with twin babies at home. And I don’t think parents were allowed?

It was quite common that, if a patient kicked up a fuss, the parents were told not to visit. This was so as not to upset the other children. Nothing about the poor child watching other parents visiting and bring gifts and sweets.

WARNING DONT READ IFYOU ARE SQUEAMISH.

Wnen I was 9 I was in hospital for a week. Opposite my bed was the isolation area behind a huge glass window. In it was a baby about a year who had fallen backwards in to fire. It was tied by its wrists and lay on its front with yellow sores from neck to bum.

The weird thing was that at visiting time they pulled the curtain across.

Poor little thing

There was a major piece of research in the 70s, apologies cannot remember cite but it's a pretty standard text in child psychology comparing outcomes for children whose parents stayed with them in hospital against those who didn't. The kids with parents around ended up staying in for much less time and had fewer complications.

It massively changed hospital behaviour around supporting parents to stay. Until then encouraging them to leave and visit minimallyif at all was standard as children became distressed when their parents left and it took nurses time to calm them. But in fact it was shown seeing parents and having them around even if it felt upsetting to say goodbye was still better for children overall both mentally and physically. My Mum was a children's social worker at the time and remembered an abrupt switch to increased and unlimited parent visiting hours. It's all very consistent with what we know about attachment theory which was still new then.

So yeah if your hospital stay was up the late 70s your parents were probably told it was best not to visit too much. By the late 80s that had changed pretty much everywhere.

But it's only policies like parental leave that make it possible for people to take time off work (unpaid) and keep their jobs that enable parents to be with kids night and day in hospital. So it's probably not till the noughties you see it become completely standard.

I had my tonsils put and my parents came at visiting time. That was it. So for about an hour each day. That must have been mid 1970's. I did cry, but no one took any notice.

At 3, I had an operation on my eyes, I was patched, so couldn't see out of one eye and my mother wasn't allowed to stay, - they discharged me after 3 days as I was so upset. I was admitted for a week 3 years later and had a great time! I remember that but have no recollection from when I was 3, seems barbaric now

I spent a week in a (British) military hospital in Germany in the early 80s. My mum wasn't allowed to stay beyond visiting hours. I hated it, tried to escape and bit a doctor (who smacked me but then he did fix my toy which had got damaged in my escape attempt). All the meals came with peas. Dad only came to pick me up when I was discharged and annoyingly he was more unimpressed at me "for acting like a little savage" than the fact that the doctor hit me. I would have been about 5 or 6 I think. Apparently I described the whole incident very indignantly. I can't imagine my 6 year old being in hospital without me. I hated being sent to get some sleep when dc1 was in NICU and the hospital didn't discharge me until he was discharged.

My Nephew was born mid 70s and over the 16 years had many operations, my sister visited during the afternoon visiting hour once or twice a week as she had other children to look after. The nurses were fantastic with him and the other children.

I remember being in isolation in a burns unit. In the next isolation room there were three boys who had turned a washing machine over on themselves. It was probably one of those 1970s Hoover top loaders.

It's very sad what you see in burns wards. I was fine, but I wonder how the boys got on.

I'm mid 40s and had major surgery age 3 which resulted in a hospital stay of many weeks. My parents weren't allowed to stay on the ward with me overnight and had to visit during visiting hours only (I can't remember the exact times but it wasn't all day).
I'd imagine that prem baby units would have had similar rules.

My DS, who is 40, had an acute interssuception (-I may be spelling that incorrectly) at six months. I stayed. But after his emergency op, a nurse sat with him and I slept in the parents room. When the docs came round in the morning, the sister reached into my son's cot and held out a black object. I didn't immediately recognise it but said it wasn't mine. It was a cigarette lighter and belonged to the nurse who'd been sitting with him.

My sister was admitted as an emergency in 1980, 3 years old. My parents were sent home after seeing her settled in as it was outside visiting hours. They got a call at midnight to say she was being taken to theatre. Perforated appendix, peritonitis, very ill. They weren't allowed to go in, had to wait until visiting hours next day. She was discharged with an abdominal drain in place, mum had to get taxi back and forth for days to get it dressed. Just horrific, all of it.

Having been in hospital for 10 days aged 3yo, I thought I'd share my experience.

My first memory in the hospital was refusing to take the medicine. So they injected it in me. I thought that was definitely cheating. I don't recall feeling it was traumatic, but simply that they had cheated me.
I'll add that I didn't refuse again though.

But I remember the nurse giving me medicine one morning, and promptly vomiting it straight back up. I remember looking at her thinking "well, you did make me take it. Serve you right." 🤣

Visiting times were in the afternoon. I don't remember particularly wishing mum was there at any point particularly in the morning. I think because no parents were there, it didn't worry me, and I don't remember any children crying for parents. There was a huge playroom, but I only really remember that in the morning they decided to hoover the ward, and put us all in the cots while they did it. I didn't like the noise, and couldn't wait to get into the playroom. I asked one of the nurses if I could go through to it while they were hoovering, and she said we had to stay in the cots. But then she came back and told me that I could come and do a "job" with her, so we went into the playroom and put the toys away. I felt really proud that I was helping.

However I remember one night deciding I was going to make sure mum was the last parent to go, and see how long I could keep her there. So every time she got up to go, I started screaming. As the night nurse ushered her out and the door closed (probably on her having a cry) I remember thinking "thank goodness, I really want to go to sleep".

I woke during the night once and the night nurse was there with her head down on the desk sleeping. I remember finding it quite comforting that she was there.

I struck up a friendship with the boy next to me early one morning. He was having his tonsils out. We had a giggle together as one of the toddlers managed to reach the jug of water on her bedside cabinet and tip it over the nurse. I shared my biscuit with him, because he was hungry, which was a pity as he had a sign on his cot saying "nil by mouth", which meant precisely zilch to either of us. He was delighted to have another day before he went into surgery, and the nurses sat us both down and tried to explain it. We didn't understand, and I passed him another biscuit, feeling delightfully naughty, until the nurse told us that he could eat now because he couldn't have the surgery until tomorrow now, and fetched us a bowl of ice cream to share (I think we even shared a spoon - whoopee for infection control) which we were both delighted with and thought this was well worth it. We planned on doing the same the next day, but the nurses obviously foiled us by taking him out for surgery before I was awake. We were not pleased and he didn't even fancy ice cream when he came round, so I helpfully ate what I wanted and tried to feed him the rest.

The only food I liked of the main courses was something I described as tomato soup with bits in. I discovered many years later this was minestrone soup, but mum never made the connection.

I remember mum coming with a bunch of seedless grapes just for me. We didn't often have grapes and even less often seedless ones because of the cost, and I didn't want to eat them at first because they looked so lovely and were all mine. I wouldn't let the nurse throw the stalk away when I'd finished.

There were two identical twins that arrived towards the end of my stay. I'd guess they were about 6-7yo, because they seemed huge to me. They rushed round shouting and broke things and I was scared. They moved one of them to another ward (I remember their mum being really upset when she came, because she could only be with one at once) and the other they put a top on the cot so he couldn't get out. He was angry. Looking back it was cruel, but at the time, I was really relieved because they'd scared me. That was probably the thing I found most scary at the time.

We had baths in a room full of baths. They were really cold, and I remember mum trying to sneak a little bit more hot in for me. It was still cold.

The only thing that I think effected me, was every night I went to sleep with a blanket over me (still got the tartan woollen blanket). Every morning I woke with it folded neatly in my cupboard. I still hate sleeping without anything over me.

So that was my 10 day stay. I don't remember it all, and I remember a few things about the treatment like being tipped facing down for "tip and tap" which they tried to make it sound like a game, but I thought it was a bit silly. And going to have an x-ray and them showing me the x-ray. I was disappointed because I was expecting it to be a colour photo of my lungs and, of course, it wasn't.

There are bits I don't remember. Apparently I reacted badly to one of the early medication they gave me. Only thing I remember about that was they changed the first really nasty tasting medicine to one that didn't taste too bad, so I was happy about that.

Thankyou for explaining all that.

@Intheoldendays You post reminded me of being a child. I had been hit in the face with a spade with concrete dried on. I was about 5.

I had to have stiches between my eyelid and my eye brow. My parents were not allowed in the room with me.

I set and had stiches not particularly bothered but then they asked my to lie on a bed on my tummy.

Suddenly my pants were torn down, a needle stuck in and my pants pulled back up.

I was then sent back to my parents crying that they had pulled my knickers down.

To this day I cannot have a needle in my bum. I just cannot relax, I'm late 50s now.

I was born in 1982 and was critically ill at birth. I was kept at the maternity hospital (to be fair I was born in a big London maternity hospital so they probably had the NICU there) for a week until my mum was recovered and then I was transferred to the children’s hospital. There was a parents room on the ward for parents mums to sleep in on camp beds. However, I remember several children throughout my childhood stays in hospital who had no visitors and I remember thinking as a child how sad the child must have been.

years ago my mum told me that parents were only allowed two one hour slots a week to visit a sick child, the thought of this sounds awful. the poor kids must have thought that they had been abandoned
when my daughter was ill about 30 years ago when my daughter was ill I was allowed to be with her and then at night i had a room to myself to sleep in. that hospital is demolished now and a new one built so not sure where parents sleep now but I know when my grandson was ill my step daughter stayed with him from admittance to discharge

I think when children today go into a children’s hospital, a lot are now serviced by a Ronald McDonald House, which allows parents to be close to their child overnight and ‘on call’ if their child’s situation changes overnight.

My friend went to hospital for a tonsillectomy when she was six, and the wards were so full she was put on an adults ward! Her parents couldn't make visiting hour on her first day. She was quietly sobbing into her pillow and a nurse shook her shoulder and said "Stop that silly crying! " ( This was the 1950s, mind you!)

Poor little thing.

@UndertheCedartree just thought of you as Woman's Hour right now on Radio 4 is discussing staying with premature and very sick babies. I'm not listening to all of it as it brings up some issues for me around my initial trauma as a poorly baby in an incubator that then led to PTSD after my DS's birth.

PS I don't know how to private message but you're still welcome to if you'd like to.

I had a small surgery when I was 7, I was in hospital for one day. my dad dropped me in in the morning and collected me in the evening, I was alone all day. The nurses were so kind to me and looked after me very well. This was the 70s.
I think now nurses have no time for anything other than medical care.

I agree. I was in hospital a lot in the 80s and 90s and most of the nurses were so kind and would sit with you for a minutes or two after they’d done their obs and chat.