> In this respect the hospital doesn't make it easy!!  Rooming in, no
comps,
> shared rooms, too many visitors, then restricting the most important
> visitor (their partner) to limited hours results in exhausted mothers.
A
> newly-delivered mother is expected to take full responsibility for her
> infant.

YES!!!  I dealt with this with my 3rd child.  The hospital I delivered
in (a major Army medical center) didn't have a well-baby nursery (which
is wonderful!  I am still amazed since their delivery practices are
still straight out of the 50s, but I digress....), but they didn't allow
anyone to stay with the moms if they had vaginal deliveries (which I
did).  The nurses only took my baby out of my room for about 1-2 hours
every night (they did weight checks and such), which would have been
fine if I had had someone else there with me the rest of the time!  Here
I was, a newly delivered mom with stitches, still kind of wobbly on her
feet, having to do ALL of the baby care.  If I wanted to go to the
bathroom I had to take the baby in with me in her bassinet.  If I wanted
to take a shower, I had to take her with me.  If she was fussy (which
she was), I got to stay up with her.  Nevermind that I had been in labor
all night, had visitors on and off the next day, then had to care for
her alone the whole next night.

I agree....while I APPLAUD the move to remove well-baby nurseries and
only have rooming-in, if hospitals are going to do that, then they need
to allow someone to stay with the mom to help care for the baby.

Kirstin <><

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