I can relate to the feeling of not "owning" your child. Maria was born at 34 weeks and spent 3 and a half weeks in the NCC at Royal Womens in Sydney.

The first couple of weeks in level 2 were really hard. Our cares originally were at 7am and 1pm, 7pm and 1am, this was useless because staff change over was at 7 and we would be kicked out for 20 minutes and often the cares would have been started/finished when we got there as we were never sure of when changeover would be completed. 1pm was useless as well as sleep time was from 1-3pm and everyone was kicked out. After we got the times changed to 6 and 12 it was better.

I had a few scares when I would go to the NCC and Maria's space would be empty. The first time this happened the student nurses (naively) told me that Maria was in Level 3 care and left it at that, no explanation or anything. Well I just burst into tears (day3 didn't help) and one of the more experienced midwives told me she was just getting a canular in and that she would be back soon - I still think they shoudl have told me, I was only just upstairs. The nightmares that I was going to lose her started from this occasion, and they have only just stopped).

No everything was bad about level 2, I was allowed to visit whenever I wanted (except 1-3pm) and the midwives I had were really supportive of trying to get me to express. We were allowed to have kangaroo cuddles, but sometimes it felt as if it was a bit of a hassle, we quickly learn't which midwives to ask. I think however that there needs to be more support for the husbands, DH felt excluded at times by the midwives as if they just didn't think he needed to be there, sometimes it felt as as parents, our only job was to be a cow and provide EBM.

Things got better in level 1, you could do more with the babies and it felt as if Maria was "my baby" there and we could bond. The midwives were more relaxed, they said to visit as much as we wanted, you can imagine their surprise when DH turned up at 2.45am one night because he couldn't sleep and wanted to do Maria's 3am cares, it was great because he got to feed her her very first bottle. DH started a trend for the other Dads to turn up in the middle of the night.


Hope this hasn't been too long, it feels great to share these feelings and events.


Louise