This is a continuation of last week's thread with this title.  Heather
wrote, regarding the old policies forbidding parents from staying with
their ill children in hospital: "Of course, eventually (and it took
years and years) the view that children's feelings are real and matter
became mainstream and no one dreams of splitting up parents from their
sick children any more."

There is a Norwegian law which guarantees the right of a hospitalized
child to have a close caregiver with them around the clock, but
unfortunately it just kind of doesn't apply if the child is, say, in
newborn intensive care (!!!!!).  At our national hospital parents are
told they are not welcome in the NICU for about 90 minutes at *each*
handover, i.e. three times a day, nor are they welcome from 8 to 11
a.m. because the neonatology rounds take place at some point during
those three hours.  In effect it means parents are told to stay away
from before change of shift in the morning, until nearly lunchtime.  I
can hear you all asking 'but don't parents NEED to be there during
rounds, to get information?'  and the answer is of course they do, but
the nursing staff find it inconvenient because there is so little
space that they fear breach of confidentiality as parents may overhear
what is said about other babies.  The pediatricians are not the ones
giving voice to this monstrous violation of childrens' rights, it is
the nurses, I'm ashamed to say.

Don't get me started, we all know these are bogus reasons for
separating the babies who need it most from the parents most at risk
for iatrogenic attachment disturbances, and many other Norwegian wards
have met the challenges brilliantly, even without rebuilding their
entire facilities.

The other exception to the law, incredibly, concerns children in whom
continued breastfeeding is viewed by the treatment team as The
Problem, in which case mother may be sent home for a stretch of
several DAYS, with strong discouragement from even showing her face,
so her young child can be forcibly weaned.   This happens if the child
is in hospital for a so-called 'feeding problem', such as reaching the
age of 7 or 8 months without eating two generous portions of
iron-fortified cereal containing breastmilk substitute, and a similar
portion of commercially available pureed dinner food every day.  I
have heard of more than one such case in recent weeks and I don't know
how one begins to address it.  If the very professionals who should
know how traumatic it is for a pre-verbal, largely breastfed child to
be forcibly separated from its mother even for an hour, think that
such an intervention is therapeutic, how do you start a dialogue about
it?

This is really the only weakness with a well-organized specialst care
system but it is HUGELY problematic.   There is literally no
alternative, there are no pediatric inpatient facilities in the whole
country outside the publicly owned system, and if you have a young
child who makes it onto their radar screen, you risk losing custody of
the child if you protest too much at the kind of abuse that passes for
medical management of feeding 'abnormalities'.    You also risk being
perceived as argumentative, demanding and difficult, and if your child
has other health problems requiring specialist care in the long term -
which is likely how the child's eating habits came to the hospital's
attention in the first place - you have a very high threshhold for
complaining.  Unfortunately!

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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