Herding mothers and babies around in groups is common practice many places in Norway.  In some of the largest units in the country, healthy postpartum women and their babies stay in a hospital-run hotel where they must take a lift to a different floor for all their meals, which are eaten in the restaurant with other hotel guests, who may be cancer patients getting treatment by day but not sleeping on a hospital ward, or simply other visitors to the city who needed a room for a night.  Babies go along because there is nobody to look after them except their mothers.

In my ward we have had a common dining room for mothers for years (it used to be the holding pen for babies at night and any other time it was deemed appropriate to separate mothers from babies).  The dining room is used as a visiting room since we lost our visitors' lounge two years ago.  There are people in and out of it all the time.  We also hold a group teaching session every day in a room in the outpatient breastfeeding clinic, attended by mothers, fathers and of course babies.  The rest of the day, the room is used for seeing mothers and babies who have gone home but need follow-up with breastfeeding or other things in the early postpartum days.

One of the things we do in the group is make a list of those attending, with their e-mail addresses.  Afterwards I send everyone who put an address down, an e-mail with my favorite websites on it, one of which is this brilliant site in Russian from the Ukraine with animated illustrations of hand expression, good positioning, steps to good attachment, and much more.  I feel happy every time the creator of that website, Vika Nesterova, posts here on Lactnet because I have so many occasions every single week, to appreciate her work and I feel like I can never reciprocate enough.  So, Vika, if it helps to tell the hospital you wrote about that Norwegian maternity units are not worried about having some quite large groups of mothers, with their partners and babies, in a room together for teaching, or eating, then please do so.

We have a stricter visitors policy in anticipation of the H1N1 epidemic, so only partners and baby's siblings may visit now.  They don't wear any special protective clothing, haven't for years.  Until two days ago, even siblings were banned, but the infection seems not to be taking hold at the expected rate, so siblings are back until further notice.  And of course we have policies to prevent cross-infection of varicella and other infectious disease.  There seems to be no point in keeping healthy people separated, and some good reasons to let them spend time together.  For starters, they support each other and they find out that lots of people need time to learn to breastfeed.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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