Lynn Milam wrote:
"To help get our breastfeeding babies to their mother's in a more timely
manner, we want to change our policy that mother's (or the banded
significant other) may pick up or return newborns to the nursery (in their
cribs only- not carried).  Instead of reinventing the wheel, does anyone
have a policy written for this that they are willing to share?"

Lynn, some of us work in very differently organized institutions.  Could you
explain what the current procedure is for how babies get to their mothers?
If I understand you correctly, under the current policy mothers or the
'banded' significant other may not pick up or return newborns to the
nursery.  If the mother can't do this, who on earth can?  And once the
mother has gotten her hands on the baby, what would ever convince her to
RETURN it to the nursery?

Perhaps you could also explain the function of the nursery.  Are healthy
babies of healthy mothers actually kept in a different room from the
mothers, except for feeding?  I am not being facetious; I am curious.

My frame of reference: tertiary care hospital that also provides routine
maternity care to the local population, and babies are not separated from
mothers unless there are serious complications in one or the other which
require surgery or intensive care.  If babies are in NICU, mothers may be
there at all hours, though she will have a bed on the postpartum ward, next
door to the NICU.  Some babies in NICU are only actually there for
medication, and are physically in the mother's room on postpartum the rest
of the time.  Healthy babies are still taken to a central room for blood
tests, and can be kept there for up to half an hour if there are a lot of
babies having blood tests that day.  (This room is the same one where
phototherapy is given if baby needs more lights than a bilibed.)  Other than
that the babies are with their mothers, or with mother's partner.  We don't
have a nursery for well babies.

Hoping for answers,
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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