I remembered another one as I went and found Mateauz NICU memory box.....weighing our nappies...I can giggle about it now but I use to hang on seeing how much 'output' he had.
SCN Loula was the same here hon...I had to fight to hold let alone BF Mateauz yet when I got to Melbourne the first thing the nurse in the quarantine section at the Mercy did was ask me if I wanted to hold my baby....I cried and cried and she was there crying with me...I will never forget her face and how much love she gave me
Lou, I'm so sorry you were treated so poorly in SCN . I will be forever grateful to all of the nurses who encouraged me to do Daniel's cares, when I was nervous in the early days. He was so small! And I was so worried I would spill precious EBM when feeding him etc. But it makes such an enormous difference to how you cope, being able to do things for your baby, it is sooo important.
Lou, my eldest Matilda was also a term baby who was admitted due to severe respiratory distress, I am sorry that you are walking this path and that the nurses treated you so poorly. Never be afraid to ask for anything you feel you need, I found that only once I started asking did I find that I was able to do (more than I realised) meaning; cares, holding baby, I found that most of the nurses had no idea what it felt like to have a baby in NICU and therefore didn't understand that something as simple as a touch meant so much. I hope your little boy is at home in your arms soon .
Lou, I'm really sorry to hear that you've had such poor care.
We were only in SCN, not NICU, but I found that the prevailing attitude would vary depending on which nurse was on duty. There were some that frowned upon us spending time in there with our boy, some that seemed to think that he belonged more to the nursery and them than he did to us. But others who were wonderful, caring, considerate and were just absolutely amazing in every way.
Ditto both BW and DD.....I found over our few days in SCN that most of the nurses were great but there were a few who were lacking in the empathy department. I have been reliving and analysing our experience over the past couple of days with Lou being in the same hospital we were and I have come to realise like you DD that it wasn't that the nurses were stopping us doing things for our babies it was more that they didn't realise we had no idea what we were allowed to do especially being first time mums as well as being first time mums of a sick baby.....we had no idea where the boundaries were, whether it was okay to pick him up or touch him in the crib or change his nappy. It was only when we started asking questions more and aksing if we could do things that more of a rapport was formed and communication was improved. i think sometimes they become so focussed on the baby that they forget there are parents attached. I think if it had been my second i woulf have known more and demanded more...as it was i was like a deer in the headlights and it was like a catch 22 situation...the middies on the ward didnt know what to with a patient without a bubba so they pretty much left us to our own devices and the SCN nurses were focussed on the baby and assumed the middies on the ward were showing/telling us what we needed to know and so between the two the parents were getting left out of the equation somewhat.
My memories are mixed......I cannot fault the care of my little boy, I wish the longterm outcome had been different as he still wont take the breast at six months after being force bottle fed for those days but I know that in reality there was no other realistic option for treatment of his particular issue....I wish syringe feeding had been an option and maybe if he had not had such stubborn hypoglycaemia, syringe feeding might have been an option but as it was he needed such large volumes that this would have been totally unworkable.
I wish we had been able give him his first bath at our days of age instead of watching as a SCN nurse do it....all little things compared to the fact we got to take home a live healthy baby at the end of it but things that bother me nonetheless.
honey
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. I will be forever grateful to all of the nurses who encouraged me to do Daniel's cares, when I was nervous in the early days. He was so small! And I was so worried I would spill precious EBM when feeding him etc. But it makes such an enormous difference to how you cope, being able to do things for your baby, it is sooo important.
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