Dad's overnight on postnatal wards - yay or nay?

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

Taking this debate off another thread so as not to derail

For me, unless you book and pay for a private room, overnights are for mums and their babies only.

No recovering woman should have to handle overnights with upwards of 4 stranger men sitting in chairs in close proximity to their bed.

Dad's there to care for the woman and baby is unacceptable - not their job. Not at the expense of the other women wanting privacy overnight.

I'm on the fence. I found it very traumatic that my partner was forced to leave an hour or so after a horrendous labour. I was provided with very little support over night and it would have been much better to have him there. However I do get what people are saying about it being noisy and feeling unsafe. The ideal would be separate wards for different scenarios

This.

My DC were born in 2018 and 2020 - the postnatal ward was so much more peaceful when the dads were only allowed in for an hour a day

However, our hospital has decent staffing levels and I never felt like my care was suffering post c section and haemorrhage. You do hear so many nightmare stories of women left to fend for themselves long before they're physically ready.

Ideally I agree no, but both me and my baby had sepsis post natally and there is no way I could have cared for her being that unwell, and the staff were not on hand anywhere near enough. But doesn't seem fair for some people to be allowed help and not others- who makes that call?

My hospital this time is private rooms with en-suites which solves the problem largely.

I have mixed feelings on this. I had my first child in covid lockdowns so no option for dads to stay even if you wanted them to. 2 hours visiting only was the rule. On my ward of 5 I was the only one who hadn’t had a Caesarian and could easily move around to pick up my baby. I really felt for the other mums and the nurses trying to help when they couldn’t turn to the side and pick up their crying babies, couldn’t easily feed without support etc. They could have really done with that help from their partners and it would have been easier for the nurses too.

On the flipside, would I have wanted arseholes playing things loudly out of their phone or wandering around at night, of course not. @Cuppasoupmonster I cannot believe he was allowed to take a bath?! Why wasn’t he kicked out? I think if dads are there there need to be really strict rules about why and their conduct, but I appreciate its hard for nurses to police this.

Dads shouldn't be there to provide care and it's a very bad reflection on our NHS that they have to be. I couldn't get home fast enough because of the shocking care I received, but obviously that's not possible for everyone.

Definitely NAY.

Everyone would like their own DH there I'm sure, but just not everyone else's.

They need to bugger off home.

Nay.

In the 80s I was in hospital for 5 completely unnecessary days with my first. It was awful and I would have loved to have my husband there too, particularly when the baby blues kicked in.

On the other hand I wouldn't want other people's husband's there or to make other women uncomfortable with mine there. The needs of the many and all that.

I would mention that with my first it was bays of 8-10. I think this time it's all rooms of 1, 2 or 4.

I agree that being able to differentiate would be ideal. If you are unwell, things are very different.

Absolutely not, unless in a private room.

No but they need to be adequately staffed so women can get all the support they need. I think a lot of wards rely on partners to pick up the slack.

Absolutely not. Making women share rooms with strange men when they are at their most vulnerable is totally not on.
Mothers with disabilities who need the extra care should have a private room where their partner can stay. This is certainly what happened 18 years ago when my friend who is blind had her first baby and I had mine. She got a private room where her dh could stay, I was on a ward where mine couldn’t. Because she needed him and I didn’t. Seems reasonable.

Ideally the wards should be sufficiently staffed to provide support overnight. When I had DD2 there was a woman who had had a c section, and I don't know exactly the issue but she was feeling very faint, kept vomiting, couldn't sit up etc. They told her she wasn't allowed to hold her baby without her DH there because she was feeling so weak and faint she might drop him/her - then they sent him home as it was night time.
She couldn't pick the baby up, she couldn't make up the formula, she couldn't get a sick bowl so threw up on herself/her bed (and it wasn't changed for a while). It was absolute insanity to leave a woman in that state to care for a newborn. The midwives were run off their feet, I'm not blaming them, but in her case the policy was cruel.

There were 3 men on the ward for my last baby, one of whom was very loud and aggressive and made loud comments whenever my baby cried through the night. Also because baby was being checked by doctors regularly they kept coming and turning on my light and this man was furious. I felt deeply uncomfortable.

Big no no from me. I felt so uncomfortable. When I went to toilet in the night I had to wait to go behind two new Dads who were stood outside. I was in agony needed to go but had to stand behind two fully fit males to use the toilet. I also was forced to make sure I was covered up all the time. It is an post natal ward for post natal woman. Men should not be there except for visiting.

I think only if a father is 100% involved like my brother in law. It would have been unkind to separate him from his DS as him and Dsis do 50% shared care at all times including nights.

I had a very traumatic birth, lost an awful lot of blood and Ds was premature and poorly, not latching properly due to a severe tongue tie, very jaundiced etc. Staffing numbers were tiny. I was in for a week they let DH stay the first night (we weren't even up on the ward until nearly 3am and DH left at 7 to go home shower get me some things I'd forgotten) and said he could after that but we found him staying until around 10/11pm then going home to sleep and coming back in the morning worked better, he was getting better rest and when I wanted to shower or if I needed to nap in the mornings he was there to watch DS. We were in for just over a week solidly and I needed to not be completely alone , it was also a very worrying time for him, DS got stuck during delivery and we were rushed into theatre, I was haemorrhaging all over the place, at once point he thought he was going to lose his wife and his baby. It's natural not to want to leave in those circumstances.

If there’s adequate care and time for midwives to help care for baby and mums overnight then it’s fine for the dads to go home. But there isn’t at the moment, so dads must be allowed to stay until there is a decent level of care available.

I would usually say nay, but given the limitations on patient assistance these days I think it’s the better alternative. There is zero point going on about how it’s not their job as the reality is there is simply not enough staff to go round, that will not change and it is likely to get worse. You can write what you like but you are not going to change this fact. So a woman who has just had a c-section who can’t get out of bed to get her crying hungry baby can either wait a few hours until a staff member can get to her, rely on the other women on the ward being up to the job and helping her out or having her partner stay with her. There are no other options, there will be no ‘fix’ in terms of staff so with this in mind, these days I am a yay unfortunately. I wish it were different and if you asked me 15 years ago I would have been a hard nay.

Shocked by the toilet thing, though. When I was on a ward with men allowed overnight, the toilet/shower was strictly patients only. The men's toilet was outside the ward and they had to be buzzed in and out, and there was no shower etc for them.

WTF?

And the midwives or staff didn’t put a stop to that?

The problem seem to be ward management.

Oh and on the ward I was in males weren't allowed to use the facilities he had to go down the corridor and downstairs to use public toilets and no way would he is any other man have been allowed to use the bath/shower!! I think that's really important

If there aren’t enough staff to provide basic care then there also aren’t going to be enough staff to make the men behave themselves, clean up after them etc. Which has been proved on this thread by the repeated instances of men blocking women’s access to hygiene facilities which are meant to be for their sole use.

Absolutely not. I have changed hospitals for this pregnancy to one where I will have my own space, because for both previous pregnancies there were so many men on the ward sat watching the TV, using the toilet constantly or on phones not helping their partners. A maternity ward should feel safe for women but I didn't feel safe.

Did you say anything? I would have said sorry you two, this toilet is for patients only, and I need to use it next please.