In 16 years of being a volunteer available by phone I have had one call
between midnight and 8 am.  Baby seemed colicky and parents frazzled and I
was glad they phoned as it sounded to me like they were THIS close to losing
it completely.  Just talking to someone calm was enough and I did tell them
to take the baby to a doctor if they had any suspicion it was ill.

So we still tell mothers they can phone anytime, day or night, and I think
just knowing that if you are really desperate, there is someone you can
call, is enough to get you through it.  You just keep asking yourself, 'How
desperate am I?' and finding comfort in realizing you aren't desperate
enough to wake someone else.  We do tolerate-- not encourage, just
tolerate-- calls to the ward from mothers in the first week or so, and as
someone else said, who else is awake at three a.m.?  But it depends on who
picks up the phone what kind of help they get so it's no real solution.  And
Heather, we don't even have a system to log these calls, but keep that a
secret among the 2000 of us, OK?  There is a lawyer shortage in Norway, it
seems.

The ones I can't deal with are the ward calls for umbilical cord anxieties.
I just have trouble not laughing.  Good thing we don't have video phones.

Rachel Myr
still in Norway

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