Man sleeping on ward

[heylottie]

I am on a 4 bed maternity ward, a small ward with beds divided by curtains. 5 day old dd currently in SCBU getting help with low blood sugar.

Its been awful but I can't fault the care and kindness of the nursing staff who are great

But

Last night a woman was admitted at 11pm, I didn't see her as curtains drawn. I was aware that someone was sat in the chair next to my curtain, ie two foot from my bed. I got up at 2am and went to the loo.

Turns out her husband was asleep on the chair.

I don't know if I am coming or going at moment, but I don't think this is appropriate is it? Woman was asleep. I mentioned to staff and they said oh he's waiting for his baby to settle in the incubator. Whilst I appreciate that, could he not have waited in the family tv room down the corridor?

Or am I being over sensitive? I just think this is a vulnerable enough time without this.

In our hospital you can pre-book and pay for a private room, but there is no guarantee of getting it, and you can be turfed out at any moment if there is somebody in greater need. Most nights I would imagine there would be no chance, the unit runs at over full capacity almost all the time.

I tend to agree that having a dp there for moral support after a straightforward delivery is not an NHS priority. The problem is that there are insufficient staff to safely look after the needs of bedbound new mothers at night after c sections or difficult births, and in such circumstances, there are basic safety issues at stake. Even in non-traumatic circumstances, it's not unreasonable to want a DP to stick around when he is the only way you will get to pick up your baby, get to the loo without collapsing, be given timely painkillers and have someone make sure you aren't bleeding out, for 12 hours out of 24. If those things were guaranteed, there would be fewer issues with strictly enforced visiting hours. The idea that the situation somehow compares to sitting with your family on an aeroplane is absolutely ridiculous.

One other thing that spring to mind is that you do see, not that infrequently, posters on here who don't even want a male member of medical staff involved in their birth due to their own concerns and issues. Can you imagine what it would be like for them if they got onto the ward and discovered there were strange men sitting three feet away from them all night?

Unfortunately that directly conflicts with what women like red want. I don't know what the immediate answer is for everyone, though I hope they all get the support they need.

(Red, apologies, I think it was your thread I was referring to in a previous post)

True, Thurlow, and this often comes about due to these women's prior abuse or assault which can cause them extreme mental distress, too. Or very deeply held religious beliefs.

Thurlow - people who don't want male members of medical staff need to get a bloody grip and realise that male midwives / doctors are there to do a job and not to have a quick peek and get off on the sight of a woman's vagina whilst she is giving birth.

Impatientismymiddlename Wed 05-Mar-14 13:09:38
Red toothbrush- I'm glad your local NHS has listened to your genuine concerns, considered them and allowed some flexibility in the rules.

TBH, I feel very lucky indeed, but its only because I did a lot of research and found a hospital that had a good track record for supporting women with certain mental health issues, that I am in this position. When I was looking around, they seemed like they are one of only a handful anywhere that have any level of understanding and have a senior midwife with a special interest in the subject.

I actually disagree that it shouldn't be an NHS priority, because the mental health of a woman who has had a bad experience can be made worse by removing the support she feels she can trust emotionally. With all due respect to midwifes and doctors, even if they are the best in the world and have a good relationship with a patient, they can not provide that kind of support. They are going through a major life change with their partner, not alone. Like I say, saying that its purely about meeting the physical needs of a woman in hospital after having given birth, is just wrong. It needs to be about both as neglecting that is proving costly to the NHS.

I also do believe that there is some evidence that early involvement of fathers, has a positive effect on parenting too and makes them more likely to stay involved with their child and to see it as their role as much as the mothers. By shutting fathers out straight away I think we are setting up them up to believe that they are lesser to the role of family in terms of caring for children and this has massive long term impacts on the whole of our society, health and welfare.

And this is why I home birth. Having a baby is an amazing spiritual tine for us and for me a part of that is we are having a baby - together.

I do very little without my husband and I would find being separated from him an hour post birth traumatic.

Hang on, impatient - why are red's concern "genuine" yet a woman who has presumably suffered some sort of trauma or even abuse and has an issue with male medical staff needs "to get a bloody grip"...??

Both sets of concerns, of knowing you will be distressed if you are without your partner, or being treated by a male doctor, are equally valid and women in either situation need support and understanding.

I actually can't believe you've just said that.

Totally agree with Thurlow and others, I had been thinking about this and really the most practical solution is investing more money on staff to proactively assist women on the night ward a bit more after they have a baby .

When I had my second baby it was in the morning and a porter helped me get to the shower before transferring to the ward (my dp is blind maybe thats why?) even something as small as that helps.

people who don't want male members of medical staff need to get a bloody grip and realise that male midwives / doctors are there to do a job and not to have a quick peek and get off on the sight of a woman's vagina whilst she is giving birth.

That is not the only reason why women request only female midwives or doctors. How silly.

Thurlow, I don't think there is any easy answer.

I DO think we need to recognise that there are a number of women who do have particular needs that fall outside the normal rules though and I don't think that this is done enough and with enough sensitivity. There is very much a 'like it or lump it' culture.

I don't think aiming for just extra staffing, is helpful though. Not when planning for maternity is such a long term effort. You need to put pressure on those hospitals who are doing it now, to make the changes. So you have to make the case for the whole issue as being just as important as otherwise it just gets lost and the opportunity is missed. You have to have a much greater appreciation and understanding of why some women need a partners support more than others, and why it is important to them. By dismissing it as 'less important' I do think you are deliberately not exploring a very important factor.

You have to make hospitals aware that there exceptions and they need to do more to accommodate those few 'difficult' cases and make women feel that actually maybe it isn't unrealistic or demanding to request certain things. They may not eventually get them, or they may not necessarily feel like they need them in the end. But if anything doing so early, helps identify a problem that the hospital can try and work through throughout a pregnancy and its not just raising its head on a day when you have so many other things going on.

The point is that, by saying "you can't", "we won't" or our "rules don't allow", it closes down channels of communication and stops women from seeking help. If a women's concern was that last time she wasn't listened to and was unsupported maybe the hospital won't be able to allow her husband to stay, but they can work to build up a trust in the months before so she feels more able to cope on her own. Simply putting extra staff on the postnatal ward, doesn't actually solve the problem for this reason - the problem is the anxiety is longer term and not just restricted to the few hours on the postnatal ward. You can not have trust, just like that.

The fact is, you don't know the entire story and you will never know. I agree with some of the other posts - maybe their baby's life was on the line and the mother needed her husband to be there, you don't know. I wouldn't have had a problem with that as an exception, as a one off on the ward. DS1 had a close call and after nearly loosing him, the last thing I wanted was for DH to leave me on my own on a ward with other babies crying and me not being able to hold my child, I needed DH to be there with me. Luckily, I was put in a 'side room' which was a single room and dh stayed with me all night, I was in so much distress. Maybe the single rooms were all taken, usually they are kept for mothers who have lost a baby but these room are sometimes all taken. I don't know if you are BU, but I think you are not very understanding.

Wow, when I had ds, dh wasn't even allowed on the ward because it was night time. With hindsight I can understand but at the time I was horrified. I didn't expect it, they wheeled me to the doors then casually announced he had to leave.

But no, Yanbu, I wouldn't want a stranger sitting next to my bed while I slept, male or female. Especially if they were talking. Urgh I hate hospitals. Hope you get out soon

I do agree, red, with most of what you say. If I had a personal choice it would be for private, or at the very most, twin rooms where there is more privacy and as such more room for partners or relatives to stay overnight if they want to to (or even could - remember there will be many women whose OH can't stay because there are other DC to look after) and a calmer, nicer environment for women to bond with their baby.

However I do think that for the majority of women just having more staff on the ward will help. The most common complaint you see on here is that there was no one to help them with their baby when they had limited mobility, and having extra staff on the ward is a million times cheaper in the short-term than rebuilding whole wards. Where I live they have just built a wonderful new maternity unit with fantastic rooms for giving birth - but the wards are still old and cramped. If somewhere that has spent millions on revamping its services won't put in the money for better post-natal care then there's very little chance money will be freed up elsewhere to create more private rooms in general.

On a scale of where I'd like extra maternity/post-natal funding spent, private rooms would come much lower than extra breast-feeding support, extra HV on the ward at night to help bed-bound mums etc.

What might be a more approachable short-term fix would be looking at the private rooms available around the hospital and how they can best be used for mums in difficult circumstances. As I've said before on threads like this, I was an emcs mum who was dumped onto a ward with 5 women and their babies overnight while my DD was in NICU. Not particularly acceptable and I believe women with their babies away from them, and women with concerns re separation or male staff etc should be prioritised.

To me, women who prefer not to be separated from their partner but don't fall into the categories above (or other ones similar to that) - well, it would be lovely if your DH could stay overnight but it's not a priority. As I said, there are other situations where you would be separated as well.

(Sorry for waffling on about this but sometimes you stumble across a topic that really gets you thinking!)

personally i dont have a problem with it on childrens wards its open visiting either parent can stay all night they can even come and go overnight providing they're quiet enough i really dont see why its much different on maternity wards or any other ward tbh.

if he wasnt bothering you, staring at you or being innapropriate i dont see why its a problem and is really no different to a female visitor being allowed overnight

when i had dc1 he had to have emergency treatment overnight i phoned my husband upset and he came to the ward as the doctor had said it was ok (it was about 10pm) the cow of a midwife looking after me came storming into my bay when He arrived screaming at me 'how dare you invite men here all hours' like i was a bloody Whore how i did not slap her i dont know she woke everyone up screaming at me then went down the ward to scream at my dh she sent him straight home i didnt even get to see him. i was livid.

when i had dd1 the staff let my dh stay overnight without accusing me of promiscuous behaviour and id had a c section tbh i genuinely couldnt have coped without him there.

And yes, heylottie, hope you and little one are both doing better today

This is really tricky. Like some other posters, I would have loved my dh to be there because I've never felt so alone than I did the night after my dd's very traumatic birth, when I was ordered not to try to get out of bed yet also scolded for not responding to my baby who had been placed out of my reach.

Still, there are rules, and if the rules are no men, then we had no choice but to comply. Like others, I think the problem could be more or less resolved if women were properly cared for on the post natal wards. And that's not an attack on the staff, who mostly do their best, it's the allocation of resources.

But having said all that, if you were an inpatient elsewhere in the hospital you'd have to put up with mixed sex wards, so in that respect it wouldn't be much different I suppose. ..

ps op meant to say hope your dd is ok and congratulations

I think the NHS either needs to fund higher levels of care overnight for all the women who can't even reach their babies or change to private rooms and allow partners to stay.

It was different when women routinely stayed in for a week and there would a few women around who had recovered enough to help pass a baby over. I was on a bay with 6 beds and none of us were able to stand unaided or pick our own babies up as there were 2 c-section deliveries, 3 quite bad instrumental deliveries and the most able of the lot of us was a woman who had dangerously low iron.

In theory we were the bay which could be kept an eye on (opposite the ward desk) but there was very rarely someone there overnight.

I pleaded to go home the next day so that DH would be there and able to pass me DS to bf. They weren't keen to send me home but as DS didn't need to be there himself I insisted and then experienced the wonderful availability of home visits to newly postnatal women

I agree that fundamentally what is needed is better post cs support for women.

The maternity unit I was in did not have one of the two sorts of post cs painkillers available when I had my 2nd section.I was bent double with pain trying to attend to my newborn, but I could see they were stretched and didn't want to make fuss by buzzing for help.
I was told later that they would have been able to give me the extra painkillers had I asked, but they weren't giving them to everyone because they were low on supplies.......

Having my dh there wouldn't have helped tbh.

Let's face it, some dh's/dp's aren't exactly your 'go to man' in a difficult situation....

Not all male partners are nice and supportive. There is a good reason why generally wards, with the obvious exception of parents in children's wards, do not allow partners or other relatives to stay overnight. When you are sleeping you are very vulnerable. You have a right to be protected from men who may sexually assault, rape or perve on women.

Ditto Bloody. Wonderful as my DP is, I don't think he would have been much use on that first night if we'd had DD with us, neither of us knew head or tails about a baby!

I honestly don't see the problem and think all partners should be allowed to stay should they wish.

Its not as if you're in the room alone with a stranger is it? Its effectively a public place with midwives and drs about. And they were in their curtained cubicle too.

I think it's 100% important to allow fathers to stay with their partner and new baby or to stay and support their partner on the antenatal ward.

There are curtains around each bed for privacy for when sleeping/feeding/changing.

I'm disturbed by the view that men should automatically be seen as a predatory, inappropriate entity ok they haven't been through the physical act of labour and birth but that child is theirs as much as the mothers, they should be there to bond and nurture in those precious first days/nights.

I'm thankful that I live very locally to an NHS Hospital that allows partners to stay.

Then again I don't view men any differently as women, I wouldn't be embarrassed or feel vulnerable being a patient in hospital just because a man might see me.

As for needing protecting incase a man staying over would perve or sexually assault me this attitude of every man may be a rapist needs to stop.

This would only bother me on the basis that it's bad enough sleeping in a ward with eight people (4 mums, 4 babies) without adding other bodies. The talking is really wrong - the nurses should make sure that doesn't happen.

As a single parent I didn't have the option to have anyone stay with me so I am not sure I get why it's necessary. But the fact that it's men wouldn't bother me.