You wrote:  >>getting a 2nd opinion about whether the baby and she can
actually be together - there may be justifiable fears about infection, but I
 think it's worth questioning. She is too ill to really hold the baby,
 says the sis, but she could do so with help, and she could see the
 baby and stroke her.<<

I worked at a tertiary care referral center for 8 years as clinical nurse
specialist, and when I got there, babies and mothers didn't get together too
often when the mother was in a critical care unit.  Usually, concern for the
infant getting an infection was cited by the health care professionals in
the units as to the reason why the baby shouldn't visit.

Then one day, we had one lady with very atypical preeclampsia/HELLP syndrome
in the surgical intensive care unit.  She was very much "out of it" and
unable to physically hold her baby.  We thought she was going to die.  And
so we said, "If she dies, don't you think it would be nice for her daughter
to know that her mother held her after she was born?"  We brought the baby
to her, propped her arms up with pillows, lay the baby upright on her chest
with pillows behind the mom's arms so she could "hold" the baby without
bearing the weight of her baby on her arms.  The unit nurses were really
resistant to these visits until they saw that all the mom's hemodynamic and
respiratory readings were IMPROVED whenever she held her baby.  That
clinched it, and baby's visits were encouraged.  The mother ended up
being transferred to a facility that could do dialysis, but she did fully
recover.  Within our institution, word about the effect of this baby's
visits to her mom spread to the medical intensive care unit, and from then
on, there were no barriers from the critical care areas for babies visiting
their moms.

We went on to have moms expressing milk and/or breastfeeding their babies in
the units, too.  I really think that once the staff see the positive effect
holding the baby has on the mother, the barriers start to fall away.

Wanda Mertick, RN, MN, IBCLC
Port Matilda, PA

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