Tiny, sick and second class

[irreplaceable]

When you're new to Mumsnet, the choice of talk topics is rather daunting and when I posted for the first time it was in the politics section. Pregnancy is not something I could ever go through again, and I'd much rather stay clear of this section. But I care deeply about the issue and it could, God forbid, make a big difference to your baby.

Do you realise that a newborn baby is not entitled to the same standard of nursing care in intensive care as an adult or older child?

Well, they are not. Bliss, the sick baby charity, has been running a camapign on this for a while, but more importantly a year-long review into neonatal services recently made its recommendations. They were widely anticipated, and included the need for 1-to-1 nursing in intensive care. But, and not for the first time, ministers said they would not provide the money that's needed.

Gordon Brown has said that every child is precious and irreplaceable, yet the tiniest, sickest patients the NHS cares for are treated as second class.

Like the Prime Minister, I know what it is like to live with the loss of a child and I cannot understand why, when money can be found for so many other things, he won't do more for neonatal services. So I started a petition on the Downing Street website, and created a website [http://www.signitgordon.org/] to help people find out more.

Mumsnet helped persuade the Government to backtrack on childcare vouchers. That was about saving money. This is about saving lives. Please help, please sign the petition.

Website link

Petition link

That is awful, petition signed. I hope we can do something to help this. I thought all babies were given the special care they needed

Done. That is quite shocking.

signed , i cried when i read that link.
my youngest dd4 , was very poorly and almost died at birth , she wouldnt be here if it wasnt for the scubu unit she was in (same one that GB`S little daughter was born in )... they need all the funding they can get to help the poor wee babies.

signed. both of mine were healthy but if they were not i would have expected for them to have recieved the care they needed.

At the regional NICU unit that I worked on very unstable gravely ill babies were given 1-1 nursing care.

In general though nurses would look after at least 2 ventilated babies as opposed to 1 ventilated child/adult on a PICU/ICU. The workload is generally heavier for larger patients though especially regarding 'cares' etc.

I do agree however that Neonatal care in general does need more funding.

Thanks, Squeezy, for putting my links up properly.

Like every other part of the health service, it will of course depend on where you live and I must be clear that my son did not die for lack of care. He fell victim to an infection that only affects premature babies, and might have been saved if he had been born at a hospital with a surgical unit.

Nevertheless, babies are not given 1-to-1 care as standard, and I created the site just to show people how many reviews, reports there have been pointing out the shortcomings in the service.

If this is what happens when UK plc is run by someone who lost a baby..

Done and bump

I am so, so sorry that this happened, words totally fail me. Done and sent the link to everyone I know.

Have signed and joined facebook link and sent to everyone I know

Done and signed.

Both my DDs spent time in NICU after being born prematurely - the staff were fabulous but there were times when they were very busy.

my baby girl wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for the care she got in the scbu.
I have put this on my facebook page to try and get some more signatures, they have a group on facebook you can join too

Signed.

Is it the case in UK that babies born before a certain gestation are given no intervention?

I remember as a student midwife one shift I was looking after 4 babies on ventilators.

It was a 24 bedded scbu, and on that shift there was only a staff midwife and me.

I had nightmares for days after. Luckily the babes where fine, but what if something had happened to one of the babes (ie breathing tube dislodged) when I was looking after another baby. I would never have forgiven myself.

Babies need one to one. Adults get it, so why not the youngest, sickest people in our hospitals?

A big thank you to everyone who has signed the petition, and promoted it on Facebook.

Diddl - yes, it is. That's what happened to the mother who is helping me take this further than just the petition. Her little girl, born at 23 weeks, died in her arms whilst next to nothing was done for her. And that's her experience of being a parent. She has had to give up trying.

I was amazed to see pictures put up on our FB group by an American woman of her daughter born at the same gestation. It is a long shot, of course, but just proves that if the will, as well as the technology, is there it's not impossible.

MN put in their newsletter a Guardian report about the Govt not paying its fair share to fund research into health conditions affecting babies and children, so I posted in the News section:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/889706-Underfunding-healthcare-for-babies-and-children

and I have to say I'm exasperated that it's been ignored, basically. Except for somebody who must have said something unpleasant then thought better of it.

Am I a nutter for thinking it fundamentally wrong that babies and children are second class? Why is that so few people on this site are interested?

Maybe it's different from trust to trust. My daughter certainly had 1-1 in NICU, as did all the other babies there. I guess it's not the same in all hospitals.

I am utterly disgusted and shocked by this. So bump/ facebook cause joined/ signed petition and asking all family to do so.

I´m sure mine also had 1-1 initially, then moved from there (high dependency?) to the next room.

"Almost one-third (30 per cent) of the 46 neonatal intensive care units in England have too few staff to deliver one-to-one care to the 19,500 babies they cared for in 2007."

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/extra-millions-for-baby-units-denie d-1814192.html

"The recent nursing activity studies from Newcastle remind us that a baby in intensive care does need one to one nursing and
that this should not be seen as the gold standard, but is in fact the level of nursing care that babies actually need."
British Assoc of Perinatal Medicine

Bliss have also been running a 1:1 nursing campaign for some time. Trouble is, they want people to email their MPs. A lot of them aren't standing at the next election, a lot more will soon be out of a job, which is why I'm going to such trouble to try and get signatures for my petition.

Petition signed. I genuinely had no idea this was the case.