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Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 4 Dec 2013 12:14:54 +0000
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>In response to your question, Germaine - about how to keep newborns from
>being wheeled out to the nursery at night, the only way to deal with this
>is to eliminate the nursery.


Indeed :)

The UK started phasing out nurseries in maternity units well over 
thirty years ago - I can't think of a single good reason for 
separating healthy mothers and babies at night, and plenty of bad 
reasons.  There's a ton of things we get wrong still, but we were on 
the money with this change in practice and expectation all those 
years ago.

My experience over this time is that if a nursery is there, it will 
be used. If there is no nursery,  people simply stop expecting to be 
with their babies anything other than 24/7.....but of course they 
*do* need someone else with them the whole of that time.

>  Ours turned into a changing room and area with
>armchairs for pumping.
>That said, it is one of the paradoxes of modern care that we have mothers
>sequestered in an institution ostensibly for their own good, yet we remove
>them from the support they could get from their families, such as someone
>to hold the baby so she can have a shower, eat breakfast, sit on the toilet
>for more than 30 seconds, etc.

And the 'etc' is a long one. I'd add chase the midwife for the towel 
she promised 20 minutes ago, refill the water jug, see if an extra 
pillow can be filched from another unused bed,  remind the mum she 
was going to ask the doc about [insert any small anxiety here],  cut 
up food for one-handed eating - there are 1001 jobs only someone who 
cares for the mother can do.


Heather Welford Neil, UK
(fresh from her trenches supporting her daughter alongside her 
son-in-law in exactly those ways and many more for a maternity unit 
pre- and post-natal stay of 6 long exhaustng days this week)
-- 

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