Visitors on post-natal wards - a feminist issue?

[JellySlice]

I have read so many threads posted by mums in post-natal wards where partners are allowed to stay overnight and excessive numbers of poorly-behaved visitors are allowed. The level of noise becomes disruptive, the lack of privacy is distressing and ridiculous demands are made of the midwives and auxiliaries.

Yet nobody is able to say or do anything about it. The midwives seem powerless to impose a standard of behaviour upon the visitors, or to evict those who abuse it. The mothers are reluctant to complain because they are sympathetic to the other women's need for companionship/love/help, but also why should they have to?

The reason I wonder whether this is a feminist issue is that the people suffering in this situation and struggling to take control of this situation are female (predominately female, in the case of the midwives).

Is 'Be Kind' socialisation backfiring on women again?

How can this be changed?

[SapphosRock]

Most people here on FWR take the position that nobody male or male bodied belongs on a single sex, female hospital ward. If you think that then it is very hypocritical to state your own male partner belongs on a postnatal ward.

Women shouldn't have to deal with random men when they're at their most vulnerable.

[Nameofchanges]

An organisation like women’s aid could be funded to provide an advocacy service. They would have the skills and experience to be aware of prioritising women’s needs rather than those of the hospital or visitors.

[littlejalapeno]

I panicked reading this because I had such a bad experience the first time ( husband went home, midwives would not help me overnight, even though I had a c section, 50+ hour labour, high blood pressure and emotional trauma. I actually was crying for a lot of the night and the midwife assigned to me said I wasn’t allowed to cry as it would upset her- that was after my baby nearly aspirated on mucous the one time I left him alone to go to the bathroom)

If my partner couldn’t be there I would not have another baby. I’ve had treatment for ptsd and anxiety since the birth caused by the trauma of the birth and after care. His focus was us but being in a bay of 4 was awful. Most of the time all the curtains were shut and there was no nurses station in there anyway. They were sat down the corridor. It felt like a prison tbh. The only time they forced us to open the curtains was when family were visiting the people opposite, so a load of men sat staring at me, not interacting with that mother at all. I shut the curtains and made my partner tell them to stop using the toilet that was just for mums and babies (he used the hospital one outside the ward) but that was intimidating when I felt that vulnerable too, so I do get it. I don’t know what the answer is. Of course everyone wants their own partner there. But perhaps only if the partner is there to help.

I think midwifery services are underfunded and undersupported. The midwives were either totally great or completely heinous bitches who should not have been in the caring profession. And I say that as analysis after the fact. I was institutionalised into be so polite and deferential out of desperation and fear. I still feel sick and vulnerable thinking about it even now. Felt like I was sh** on their shoe most of the time. While they fudged my records to make it look like I was getting medication at the right times and in the right doses. Discharge took 9 hours too.

There is a lot that needs to be fixed in the system but I doubt it will be, and threads like this focusing on the men are a red herring and distract from working towards a real solution.

[Barbarella1]

Ah bless Jurgen it’s all about you isn’t it.

Here’s a clue. The mother of your child carried them for 9 months. Pregnancy is natural but so is death. Labour is very painful, if men had to give birth maternity care would be very different.

[SorryAuntLydia]

This is a feminist issue which in particular negatively affects lower income families/working class women.

Family A: lovely Daddy gets two weeks paid paternity leave from his professional job and with Mummy can afford to pay for any childcare the other children at home might need. He wants to maximise his time with his new baby so wants to stay all night. And he is able and willing to articulate any needs his partner may need. How lovely for family A!

Family B: lovely Daddy works zero hours contract so goes back to work as soon as baby is safely born. He has to be home at night for their other kids. He pops in when he can. Mummy B gets less attention from the nurses because she doesn’t have an able-bodied adult to advocate for her - even if she has greater medical need.

And both these scenarios assume that the Daddy is lovely - whereas many of us have experienced post-natal wards with less than lovely partners present. And the statistics for VAWG prove that there is a risk to vulnerable women from men.

A post-natal ward should be first and foremost a safe space for women and their babies. A good example of how patient-focused they should be is the way in which NICU is run, where the health and safety of the babies is prioritised over everything else. Having experienced this, I can tell you that I was only allowed to be with my baby when the staff deemed me not to be in the way of them providing life-saving care to any of the babies. This is a patient-centric model of care that post-natal women should experience.

It is worrisome that so much of natal and post-natal care is now supposed to centre both the parents. The fact is that being pregnant and giving birth are exclusively female activities and some men just cannot countenance this. As feminists we should be protecting the maternity units as safe spaces for women to give birth and recover - rather than the crucible of fatherhood.

[PermanentTemporary]

It's interesting reading this as my instinct is completely against allowing partners to stay over on a maternity ward even with single rooms, due to shared facilities such as food, day rooms etc.

But I agree the key is to say, what should postnatal care look like? How can postnatal care of women and of babies, two separate but interdependent patient groups, and the special role of the spouse in the baby and mother's life, be well managed?

[Nameofchanges]

Unless there is something wrong with them, babies are not patients. The mother is the patient.

[JellySlice]

IT'S NOT ABOUT men's presence!

It is about managing visitors.

It is about empowering female staff to restrict numbers of visitors, to tell visitors - male or female - "This behaviour is unacceptable. You must not do XYZ. If you cannot comply, leave."

It is about ensuring that female staff are respected when they try to protect the women in their care.

If staff have the authority to manage visitors, then the needs of the traumatised/religious mother can be taken into account to ensure she has respite from the needs or wants of the mother whose partner is visiting.

Certainly having more staff would reduce women's need to have family support in the ward, but I'm not sure it would reduce the number of piss-taking visitors.

[Aureum]

In an ideal world, beside curtains would be wide open all day
No. I wanted privacy with my baby. I didn’t want random women staring at me and trying to speak to me. I certainly didn’t want to get my breast out and try to feed in front of strangers.

It's all very well saying other women could help but that leaves things very much to chance with who is around you
I can tell you for sure that I didn’t give a shit about any of the other women on my ward. I was there for myself and my child, not to be an unpaid carer to a complete stranger. And who wants to be helped by a stranger who hasn’t been DBS checked and god knows what their background or history is. The only appropriate carers are either a family member or qualified nursing staff who’ve undergone relevant safety checks.

[Purpleartichoke]

SorryauntLydia

You say you were ok being separated from your newborn child in the nice. Even for the nicu they are finding a true patient oriented system is individual rooms or bays with parent rooming in. Babies recover faster when they are with their parents. Babies recover faster when they are in quiet bays or rooms with dim lights and less noise. Architectural design can be used to facilitate care while also providing rest.

Nothing about the old and sadly in many places still in use system was about patient care. It was about staff convenience. .
Instead of little adjustments, women should be fighting to completely up-end the system.

[JellySlice]

Most people here on FWR take the position that nobody male or male bodied belongs on a single sex, female hospital ward.

Nonsense.


Most people here on FWR take the position that female patients should take absolute priority on a single sex, female hospital ward.

[Nameofchanges]

I feel we’re in an age of such massive individualism that women, or anyone else for that matter, won’t fight for all women but only for themselves as an individual.

About 2,000 newborns a year are taken into care. Those women are also on maternity wards. The notion that the best hospital care for women is either more care from visitors or more care from other patients is not a solution.

[SapphosRock]

As feminists we should be protecting the maternity units as safe spaces for women to give birth and recover - rather than the crucible of fatherhood.

This. It's ridiculous to pick and choose which female spaces should or should not cater for men depending on what suits you.

Maternity units should be the number 1 safe space for women and seem to centre male needs more and more.

I posted on the other thread about the male partners on my local postnatal ward tucking into the breakfast laid out for the female patients. They were all crowded around the table chatting and helping themselves to everything. Men like to push boundaries and it's annoying at best, intimidating at worst.

[SapphosRock]

Most people here on FWR take the position that female patients should take absolute priority on a single sex, female hospital ward.

Exactly. And having someone else's boyfriend ogling you as you try and breastfeed and deal with the pain of your episiotomy stitches is not prioritising the needs of female patients.

[EuroMillionsWinner]

When you go for treatment on your genitals in other settings, male or female, you do so in single sex environments (although some health care professionals may be of the opposite sex, they are just that, vetted and trained HCPs, not randoms), but in maternity, one of the most vulnerable times in a woman's life, she's expected her entire body and its functions and process to be open to all and sundry. Just no.

[CatteStreet]

Excellent posts by Michelle, SorryAuntLydia and others.

And this: 'in maternity, one of the most vulnerable times in a woman's life, she's expected her entire body and its functions and process to be open to all and sundry. Just no.' Cf. also bloody Bounty.

And I certainly don't want to be forced into some kind of collective experience of compulsory chumminess with and 'learning from' other women. Bringing the atomisation of society into this misses the point that people have always socialised in groups with 'people like us'. Chucking the transient and extremely diverse population of a maternity ward together, each one having had a more or less physically and emotionally shattering experience, is not going to produce some kind of lovely commune. Again - nobody's demanding men bond over their medical procedures.

[CatteStreet]

(The last paragraph was in response to the poster in favour of wards with the curtains open all the time)

[Yellowandpurple78]

Some people are missing the point entirely - if you are in hospital it’s because you need medical care. There are exceptions - where you are low risk and delivered too late in the day to have an early discharge, for example.

Birth is increasingly medicalised and the trauma sustained by both mums and babies and their care needs afterwards are higher than ever. We have babies on IV antibiotics hidden all day behind curtains, when not so long ago these babies would have been in incubators on a neonatal unit. These are very poorly babies, often on the brink of becoming septic. And we have become so focused on privacy and the importance of whole family bonding that we think it’s ok to have very sick patients behind curtains. This doesn’t happen in any other type of ward - on elderly wards curtains are only drawn when patients are having personal cares/getting in and out of bed etc.

Postnatal care isn’t a family event for all women. For increasing numbers of women and babies it’s a medical event and the safety at that time is paramount. Men in the bays is another message that it’s just like a hotel and increase the withdrawal of ALL women behind their curtains. I personally find it very sad when you go in and see a woman who you can tell feels intimidated by the environment outside their curtain. I don’t think anyone should feel like that in a hospital.

[ErrolTheDragon]

I see your point ... but there are women(I was one) who don't need medical care but aren't ready to go home for a few days for various reasons. Maybe there needs to be more of a separation between 'normal' post natal care (help with establishing feeding etc) and those mothers and babies who do need medical care ?

[xxyzz]

When I had my first dc, I had an unbelievably disturbed night in a ward with 6 mums and babies, and that was before you bring visitors into it. New babies cry and need to be fed, understandably. This is disruptive for all the other mums and babies in the ward.

I could at least see and accept that that was inevitable.

I was much less happy with the entire family (not just the husband) of the woman in the bed next to me, who stayed well beyond visiting hours, until late in the night, including children running about etc. It was incredibly disruptive and annoying to everyone else in the ward - there were clear, limited visiting hours, but they were just ignored and not enforced by any of the staff.

For me, it's not an 'entitled fathers' issue or 'men versus women' issue, it's just a 'respect for patients' issue - patients need to be able to rest, which means that visiting hours need to be strictly limited, no matter whether it's your mum or your husband or your daughter visiting. And these visiting hours need to be enforced.

Separate to that, care needs in hospital need to be met by increasing staffing - sadly, this is an issue that affects all patients, not just those in maternity wards, as anyone with responsibility for looking after an elderly parent will know.

[Nameofchanges]

Why are women on maternity wards other than for medical care?

[ErrolTheDragon]

More home births and more support to allow new mothers to go home quickly might be part of the solution.

[Nameofchanges]

I see there is an example given of establishing feeding, but if you can’t do that without the assistance of a health care worker, surely that is a medical need?

[Goosefoot]

Vulnerable people should never be left in the hospital alone. Children especially should have an advocate present at all times. Mom very likely isn’t capable of that job immediately after birth. I know I couldn’t walk across the hospital to follow my infant to tests after my stomach had been cut open. Dad’s presence is for the baby and it is essential.

Yeah, this is important. I wasn't in any shape to advocate for or follow around my babies, and I wasn't always able to advocate for myself. The father is the parent of a minor child in the hospital. That's a relationship that exists separately from the mother/child relationship.

[Nameofchanges]

But the baby isn’t necessarily a patient and isn’t undergoing medical treatment. If a baby declares herself unable to advocate for the treatment of a baby, then of course another person with parental responsibility should be sought.

It is the norm for vulnerable adults to be in hospital without a family member present.