How much power do we have?

[~ Mylitta ~]

I'm just curious if anyone knows how much power parents have vs how much parents doctors have when it come to babies after birth?

That's pretty vague, so I'll give an example...

When my daughter was born the paediatrician discovered a heart murmur. My daughter had a PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus). The duct between her arteries was much larger than normal (more than twice the size of her actual arteries) and the concern was that it may either not close over and require surgery to close it, or that as it closed it may pull on her artery and cause a narrowing which would compromise blood flow to her body. The third option was that it would close over within a few days and not cause any problems (which is thankfully what happened. She was technically admitted to SCN but was able to room with me for most of the time on a mobile oxygen saturation monitor to monitor her oxygen level. If it dropped we would know she needed attention. In the end we stayed four nights and she was given the all clear.

Just wondering if in a situation like that, can the parents choose to not admit into scn and take the baby home if they get an oxygen saturation machine themselves so that they can monitor their child at home? I know you can buy or even rent them. Or if the doctor says the baby must stay in scn is that the final say and the parents can't do anything about it? I'm sure we probably would have just stayed at the hospital anyway, but I'm more just giving this as an example to find out how much power the medical profession have over the parents.


EDIT: Another example would be when someone has a premmie in hospital and the only thing that is holding up discharge is weight gain. If there is nothing else wrong with a baby and it just needs to gain a little more weight before the doctors want to discharge it, can the parents step in and make the decision to take the baby home and monitor their weight at home instead?