Why don’t U.S. hospitals let women sleep quietly for the night in the hospital after giving birth?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's CYA for the hospital.

It's preventable care. If they go too long w/o check-in your vitals and something happens it could have been anticipated, controlled, or highly monitored.
Things like blood pressure can creep up, the bleeding may maybe larger clots than normal, your temperature may indicate onset of an infection....all of which are checked frequently to avoid future disaster especially during those first 25l4hrs post partum when your body is adjusting to post pregnancy, milk production is triggered, hormones fluctuating, uterus trying to constrict, etc.

Cool- then care for the baby. Why would you give such a patient a baby to care for too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one sleeps in the hospital. Everyone gets checks. Use the bassinet. Have someone stay with you.

No one sleeps well in a hospital. True. Everyone gets checks. True. But no other hospital patients besides new mothers are expected to take care of another hospital patient.” (The baby)

Welcome to parenthood?

Exactly.

It’s a rough rocky start. Most babies do sleep remarkably well that first night. Pack earplugs and an eye mask. It will help with the room dynamics. We got two hour chunks of sleep, which was about the same as at home the first week.

I understand the frustration. It’s the most tired I’ve ever been (multiple day labor), you live through it.

You said “we.” What about women who are alone after giving birth? You sound like you support “baby friendly” hospitals…why? Are you one of those people who thinks “I had to do it so everyone else should to.” You wrote “You live through it…” so that makes me think you believe that it’s fine for hospitals and nurses to not help new mothers care for infants and that mothers shouldn’t complain. Well, I lived through it twice but that doesn’t mean I think it’s good that new mothers and babies are not supported and cared for in the hospital like they should be. If we just accept that this is the way, things will not improve. It doesn’t have to be this way. Postpartum care and maternal health care in general in the US is really poor and it should be improved.

DP. I challenge your statement that postpartum care is poor. I had excellent care. In general I’ve excellent medical care in this country. But our care is not delivered evenly. If you have good health insurance and you’re near good health facilities, you receive good care. Maternity care here is not centered on making the patient feel relaxed. It’s centered on avoiding death, lawsuits and so forth and that is why they interrupt sleep for all the health checks. I’ve never heard of “baby friendly” hospitals - are you saying there is NO option whatsoever to have the baby taken to the nursery for a few hours? I personally don’t think it’s the end of the world, but I can see how if you’re a single mom or alone it would be nice to have help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's CYA for the hospital.

It's preventable care. If they go too long w/o check-in your vitals and something happens it could have been anticipated, controlled, or highly monitored.
Things like blood pressure can creep up, the bleeding may maybe larger clots than normal, your temperature may indicate onset of an infection....all of which are checked frequently to avoid future disaster especially during those first 25l4hrs post partum when your body is adjusting to post pregnancy, milk production is triggered, hormones fluctuating, uterus trying to constrict, etc.

Your take CYA - my take thank FG someone is keeping me alive and looking for things my sleep deprived post birth brain doesn’t think to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had my last baby at Inova Fairfax 15 years ago by c-section. I was able to send the baby to the nursery so that I could get some rest and recover. I wasn’t in any condition to pick up and care for the baby alone and DH couldn’t stay with me because he was at home with our older kids. I can’t imagine a hospital refusing to care for newborns in the nursery.

Have things changed so much? Patients need to loudly complain to the hospital staff, patient advocate, their doctors, and insurance company. File a formal complaint, if necessary.

Lack of care for mothers and newborns shouldn’t be tolerated.

Please do some research. Baby friendly/no nursery has been the norm for 10+ years. The quality of care for new mothers is terrible.

+1 My youngest was born in 2009 but I distinctly remember this being a hot topic here around the time it changed from the listserv to this website, so early 2010s. Shady Grove was one of the first IIRC - they were advertising “baby-friendly” like it was the best thing ever and not a cash grab.

[Anonymous]

It’s not been mentioned, and in NICU babes unpreventable - but babies are also recovering from being born. Being separated from their mother is traumatic even if they are sleeping. Your baby knows your scent and heartbeat. Being down the hall is not awesome for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not been mentioned, and in NICU babes unpreventable - but babies are also recovering from being born. Being separated from their mother is traumatic even if they are sleeping. Your baby knows your scent and heartbeat. Being down the hall is not awesome for them.

Apparently the prolific poster on here doesn’t care about that

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not been mentioned, and in NICU babes unpreventable - but babies are also recovering from being born. Being separated from their mother is traumatic even if they are sleeping. Your baby knows your scent and heartbeat. Being down the hall is not awesome for them.

Yep. This. Which is why we need better nurse/patient ratios and more hands on help for the recovering mom.

Wouldn't even need to be super skilled care. I did this for my sister. Even a post partum doula in the room to rock and hold baby and get the mom anything she needs, notify nursing staff when mom and baby are awake and it's a good time to take vitals if they are due soon.

[Anonymous]

Post partum doulas or someone in that role so nurses can do their jobs. That’s the midway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not been mentioned, and in NICU babes unpreventable - but babies are also recovering from being born. Being separated from their mother is traumatic even if they are sleeping. Your baby knows your scent and heartbeat. Being down the hall is not awesome for them.

Yep. This. Which is why we need better nurse/patient ratios and more hands on help for the recovering mom.

Wouldn't even need to be super skilled care. I did this for my sister. Even a post partum doula in the room to rock and hold baby and get the mom anything she needs, notify nursing staff when mom and baby are awake and it's a good time to take vitals if they are due soon.

Exactly!

This is also why people hire sibling doulas. They are the on call childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And put the baby in a nursery room for the night. The recovery should be treated like recovery from a surgery; no interrupting sleep.

Hahaha. I’m assuming OP has never had surgery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one sleeps in the hospital. Everyone gets checks. Use the bassinet. Have someone stay with you.

No one sleeps well in a hospital. True. Everyone gets checks. True. But no other hospital patients besides new mothers are expected to take care of another hospital patient.” (The baby)

Welcome to parenthood?

Exactly.

It’s a rough rocky start. Most babies do sleep remarkably well that first night. Pack earplugs and an eye mask. It will help with the room dynamics. We got two hour chunks of sleep, which was about the same as at home the first week.

I understand the frustration. It’s the most tired I’ve ever been (multiple day labor), you live through it.

You said “we.” What about women who are alone after giving birth? You sound like you support “baby friendly” hospitals…why? Are you one of those people who thinks “I had to do it so everyone else should to.” You wrote “You live through it…” so that makes me think you believe that it’s fine for hospitals and nurses to not help new mothers care for infants and that mothers shouldn’t complain. Well, I lived through it twice but that doesn’t mean I think it’s good that new mothers and babies are not supported and cared for in the hospital like they should be. If we just accept that this is the way, things will not improve. It doesn’t have to be this way. Postpartum care and maternal health care in general in the US is really poor and it should be improved.

Start a program to make the change then.

With my first the “program” was just the norm and how hospitals operated. By #2 and #3 I needed to become some sort of activist. Sad.

You spelled advocate incorrectly.

[Anonymous]

I’m ok with the check ins. C-sections are major surgery, vaginal births can often have tearing or other injury that they need to check, they have to make sure you’re not bleeding too much which can be indicative of problems. BP checks are key to catching a lot of issues as well. Yes they should consolidate these as much as possible, yes the teaching hospitals are a lot worse for interruptions. I think they did a good job of balancing patient care and checks and still allowing rest time at Inova Fairfax. People should talk about their birth and recover experiences at different hospitals so you can choose your OB providers accordingly to what hospital they deliver at.

By that same token, I sent my babies to the nursery at night as much as I could. I think it was about a 6-7 hour stretch, roughly midnight to 6 or 7 am. Again, Inova Fairfax had this option. I know it’s being taken away now though, as it costs more money and more staffing to have a nursery, so they can pinch some pennies, cut staffing levels, and push newborn care onto the mom who just gave birth and her support person. I think they used Covid as a cover to close the nurseries and who knows if they will or did reopen. But you need rest to recover even after a fairly routine vaginal birth, especially after a long labor. You’re going to be going home shortly and, realistically and from my personal experiences, mom is going to be doing 95% of the newborn care - better rest up in the hospital as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

My kids are 4 and 8 and I'm still mad about this, TBH. When I had my oldest, the hospital was chasing the Baby Friendly designation.

I was in labor for 30 hours and had been awake for 40 by the time my son was born. We'd been in the hospital for 20 of those, so my husband wasn't doing so hot either. First time parents, deliriously tired.

I planned to breastfeed, and that went pretty great right off the bat. But baby would not sleep in the hospital bassinett so one of us had to be always holding him for the other to have any chance at rest. We both fell asleep holding him at various points, and were chided by nurses.

I asked multiple times for baby to be taken to the nursery, even just for a couple of hours and was refused everytime. The reason given was because he was breastfeeding on demand. Only formula fed babies could go. I should have fought harder, but I was too out of it from sleep deprivation to recognize this plus as naive FTM, definitely internalizing the shame from the nurses for having even asked.

Our early days at home were rough. Baby continued to be a crap sleeper and I never really recovered in terms of the sleep deprivation. I eventually ended up in full scale PPA with SI, which was really fun to fight through without meds because I was too convinced I had to breastfeed at all costs.

Fastforward to my daughter's birth. Same hospital, but she briefly had respiratory failure so spent our whole stay in NICU as a precaution. No parent wants their child to experience a medical emergency, of course, but her not rooming in was honestly glorious for me. When she needed to be breastfed, or if I wanted to do skin to skin, I just walked right from my L&D room around the corridor to the NICU. Then I went back and SLEPT. And recovered from birthing a human. It was amazing.

Certainly it also had to do with now being experienced parents, but starting off back at home rested made all the difference and it was a MUCH smoother postpartum experience for the whole family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Griping on a message board changes nothing. Take action in a productive way.

Venting is fine. Debating here is a waste of everyone’s energy. And no you are not educating anyone.

Apparently we are given the number of people posting that 1) still think nurseries exist and 2) think “oh a nurse can just take the baby for a few hours”.

But hey, scroll on by if this thread isn’t for you.

what are you accomplishing here? On this site? You like to monologue. Go for it. Be specific how posting here is effective.

Oof so angry. Who hurt you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a nurse. We wake people up multiple times in the night to check their vital signs, give meds, and draw blood. Those post-surgery patients are not getting a restful night of sleep.

those patients should have their sleep protected too. not to mention that a woman with an uncomplicated vaginal birth does not need vitals checked.

disrupted sleep in the hospital was absolutely nightmarish for me post-partum. like, I actually almost felt delusional the second night.

You can sleep or we can make sure that you aren't bleeding out, showing signs of an infection, or having dangerous changes to your blood pressure. If you think you don't need that, then you should just go home. Making sure patients stay alive is more important than making sure patients have uninterrupted sleep.

Or, you can keep me alive and still treat like a human being. I had my first baby in 1999, before the hospital MBAs had this brilliant baby friendly idea. My baby spent most of the time in the nursery, I got some rest after a difficult labor, and we happily went home in 48 hours. By the time I had baby #3, the lactation consultants, rooming in, etc. were in a full blown attack mode.

Unfortunately, the only thing that will change it now will be if a baby does get harmed somewhere and the hospital will have to pay a gazillion bucks. Then the liability insurers will put a lid on it pronto.

I have no problem with babies going to the nursery if the parents want it. Holding babies is the best part of my job.