to think parents might prefer a midwife full of cold to none at all?

[HarderToKidnap]

Can't give too much background detail, but imagine this. You have come home from hospital with your baby and you are expecting a midwife to visit you. Maybe you are anxious parent, maybe you are having problems feeding. You get a phone call cancelling your home visit and putting it off until the next day. Meanwhile a midwife who feels perfectly well has been sent home from work because she has a streaming cold - well past the sneezy/infectious stage (besides which her hand hygiene is impeccable and she ALWAYS catches it and bins it) because "it will cause parents to be anxious".

Newborns rarely if ever get colds in the same way adults do, so not much chance of passing it to a baby. I think parents would rather the midwife came with her cold than their visit be cancelled. AIBU?

Just because people turn up for work in a health care setting ill doesn't make it OK. I would quite nicely tell anyone in those setting to piss off if they were ill and around me and my newborn.

HarderToKidnap Your attitude and ignorance astounds me, I'm shocked that you would think that a newborn wouldn't get a cold. I seriously hope you take the time to better further your education.

Bloody hell this thread has made me want to freebirth at home next time!

No, it just makes you utterly ignorant and ignorance can be dangerous, especially when the ones you're supposed to care for could be badly harmed by it.
I have yet so see a doctor or a nurse for that matter who had visible cold symptoms. Call me lucky indeed...

Harder I definitely think that sending the ill midwife home was the right thing to do. But at the same time, I can understand the annoyance of the mums you had to phone. I would assume that there was a system in place to cover sick leave (agency staff or something). Probably wishful thinking on my part but it seems crazy if there isn't some kind of provision for absences.

I dont think health care profs should come to work with colds at all.

Are you really past the infectious stage with a cold if you are still bunged up and 'coldy'? You said she was 'streaming'. That implies that stuff is coming out of her nose. Isnt that stuff full of cold germs?

I am definately not PFBing. I have just had DC5 and I pretty laid back with my babies. But newborns are vunerable to infection, of course they are.

Why put one at risk of a cold which would almost definately cause difficulties feeding and could end up with a hospital visit?

Perhaps she could offer to wear a face mask to minimise the risk of infection?

Tbh, while it was nice that the m/w came by, I was not frantically awaiting her arrival. I would have survived without her.

I have to be honest, given my own experience of community midwives I wouldn't have expected her to turn up anyway and would have turned somewhere else for breastfeeding advice.

You can relax Rollmop, I've yet to kill anyone. Despite my dangerous and maverick attitude to colds. I'm sure it's only a matter of time though. To keep yourself absolutely safe from me, you should JUST see consultants. Not sure they do home vists after you've had a baby but for G-ds sake whatever you do, don't let a midwife visit you. She'll probably breathe on your baby or something, which of course a consultant would never do.

Withorwithout that is really sad, and unfortunately the way I feel our Trust is going.

It's alright for those of us who mumsnet and have Tiktok on tap

Actually, I saw a fabulous maternity care assistant at home who gave me great breastfeeding advice. She saw my friend who was struggling too and we both agree she was the person who turned it around for us.

yikes you are touchy to posters!did you really expect pts to say oh yes come and see me.potential rsv risk,come right on in.you must know newborns can be susceptible to acquired infections in the first few post natal weeks

Feeling sorry for you, HarderToKidnap!

FWIW think you are being reasonable: health service would collapse if people were off with minor illness. And given that you are infectious for 48 hours before your cold symptoms start, it would mean you would have done most of your "infecting" before you went off anyway.

The common cold is called that because it is COMMON! I'd be happy for a midwife with decent hygeine skills to come and see me with a cold. In fact, I'd be grateful she had dragged herself to seee me when she would probably rather be curled up with a lemsip.

I mean common in that people everywhere are incubating without obvious symptoms, all the time. Stopping a snot-riddled midwife is the least of your worrries! And babies are born with passive immunity from mother in their blood well before the breastfeeding starts.

To be honest after 2 DC I have learnt to expect very little in maternity aftercare services. Your ladies will learn that too by the sounds of things.

I think YABU, like others have said I wouldn't want to catch a cold so shortly after giving birth, let alone the baby. 2 weeks after having dd2 we all (dh, dd1, dd2 and I) came down with a v+d bug it was absolutely horrendous.

When I had dd2 we didn't get a MW home visit, we had to go to the hospital 2 days after we got home for a MW appointment. I felt really sorry for the first time mums, most of them still in pjs, looking shell shocked and knackered.

Bet you've never had a newborn with a common cold Little...

i would tell her to go and come bk later .

www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/939.aspx?CategoryID=54&SubCategoryID=135

Term babies are better protected than you would think, actually.

Seriously, can you imagine how often (and for how long) people in healthcare would be off work if you couldn't work with a common cold? There are strict rules about very infectious and potentially more harmful illnesses like D&V, but for the vast majority of term babies, being exposed to a person with an obvious cold is no huge deal. Their immune systems are being bombarded from day one from other people on the ward (or do you ban expectant mothers with a cold?) or the older sibling at nursery, or the postman. Evolution has equipped them very well to deal with it! Thats why they have passive immunity and why breastmilk contains antibodies too.

I'm a nurse and if I have felt unwell with a cold I probably wouldn't go in to work, if it was just a sniffle I probably would turn in; however at work there are signs all over the hospital I work in telling visitors not to visit if they have coughs or colds; no advice for staff in the same situation tho!!
I don't think I would have liked a midwife with a cold coming round to see dd, particularly if doing anything hands on with her, any more than I would welcome friends or family visiting if ill too.

I'm a HCP and I won't go near clients when I have a cold, and usually take the worst days off completely. I hate it when people come into work sneezing everywhere as it then inevitably spreads like wildfire.
Stripey how can a trust dicipline staff for 3 episodes of sickness???? I know some people take the p but some people just get sick!!!

OP - I would have been furious if you'd have turned up at my door, and I really wanted to see a midwife, for all the use she was. A cold was the last thing I needed, nevermind my tiny baby.

lovely I work for the NHS too (not as a mw) and it really is true about the sickness limits. Most of our dept are on "monitoring" for exceeding the sickness limits.

I was once given a warning for "persistent short term absence". 3 migraines in the space of 12 months. I was very as I was relatively new in post at the time and had told them openly on my Occ Health form that I had fairly regular migraines. Short term absences are generally viewed as us being suspicious and one is made to feel like a skiver.

Thankfully I have enjoyed good health in recent years. Apart from 2 months off with hyperemesis but as it was due to pregnancy they couldn't touch me for that.

Have to agree with the majority. I would not be happy if a midwife came to visit my newborn with a streaming cold.

I should also add that I would not be particularly impressed to see a GP with a streaming cold either, and most definitely not the consultant who carried out my ops - I just think health professionals should not be working closely with patients wen ill.

I don't want to suggest its not important if a baby gets sick, herbie - my point is that the numbers that will get sick are pretty low and can, for the most part, be predicted: premature babies or those with congenital problems. Obviously babies at higher risk should be protected as far as possible. But how far do you go to protect the healthy, lower risk babies from their inevitable first cold? I seriously think its ok to be at work and visit normal newborns, as long as a HCP with a cold takes reasonable precautions, ie washes their hands before they touch me or my child, and doesn't cough or splutter over us (so I'm talking a normal cold, not being really poorly with one).

Otherwise, what on earth would happen in winter? Incubation time is 2-5 days for a cold, then you are infective for as long as you have symptoms. That means up to 2 weeks off work, maybe two or three times over winter. And it probably wouldn't massively reduce the risk of your newborn being exposed to someone with a cold, somewhere

onepiece Yup I too work for the NHS but try my best not to care about ridiculous policies like that. Of course they need to make sure people aren't skiving but as I said if you're sick, you're sick. I was getting several migraines a week when I was pregnant but thankfully only a handful were bad enough that I had to go home (or I was too blind to drive home till it had gone so just slept at my desk!). But it did make me laugh when I came in the day after leaving at 2pm (so 3 hours earlier than I should have) and was given a return to work form and a return to work interview...FFS!
Sick people should not treat sick people. It just makes more sick people!

It's finesaying that baby might be exposed to a cold you don't know you have, but WHY expose a baby to a cold your DO know you have?

Plus, I don't want your stinking cold either!