Reading the descriptions of newborn nursery practices at other hospitals makes
me very sad and frustrated.  It sounds like the hospitals I worked at 15-20
years ago.  Although my hospital is far from perfect, this makes me appreciate
it more.  We have no "newborn nursery" as such.  The babies never leave the
mother's bedside unless there is a medical reason.  All the intial care
(assessment, meds, weighing, etc.) is done at the bedside.  We have a rolling
cart with the scale and everything else that's needed on it.  The only time a
healthy, full-term newborn leaves mom is right before discharge for the few
minutes it takes to do the PKU.  Or if a baby boy is being circumcised.  We do
have a couple of older night nurses who try whenever possible to convince moms
to have their babies go to the nursery so one nurse can be assigned to all the
babies.  But in general we do only couplet care.  Our biggest problems have
more to do with OB practices:  way too much intervention, high C-section rate,
too many inductions, etc.  And - something I hope to change eventually - since
C-sections take place in the main OR and moms are recovered in the main
recovery room, babies go to nursery while mom recovers, thus missing the
important first couple of hours.  We are a very small maternity unit, but no
reason it couldn't be done this way in larger facilities too.  Once nurses get
over the shock of learning to do things in a new way, it's really quite easy.
Miriam Levitt RN, IBCLC