OB-GYN-L Messages for June, 2006: Re: Third stage, how long?

I work a little bit (mostly retired) in a small community hospital in Washington state that still has a normal newborn nursery. In my last small community hospital (13 years ago), we had no newborn nursery and all couplet care. When I came here, it felt like stepping back in time to 1980, and although we try (and midwives do a good percentage of the births here) it has not gotten any better in 13 years! Nurses try to take the baby from the mom within a few minutes of the birth, we warn the parents not even to let the nurse take the baby for a weight until they are ready for a 10-15 minute separation. It is like psychological tug of war.

Fran Wilson, CNM
Kennwick, WA

Wow - feels like stepping back years and years and years - how many hospitals still have normal newborn nurseries??? Susan

***************************************************
Susan James
Directrice
Programme de formation des sages-femmes
Université Laurentienne
Sudbury, ON

>>> annam@uic.edu 06/22/06 9:06 pm >>>
Here in our hospital (community hospital, 180-200 births per month),
I try to put the baby on mom's abdomen. Nurses will leave it there
for a short time if I put it there, but patients do often want baby
taken to warmer once I start checking vagina for tears and suturing
anything that needs it. The nurses want to get all their
paperwork/banding/footprinting/vitK/eyedrops done because the nurses
in the nursery get upset if baby comes to nursery with a bunch of
stuff still needing to be done. I think it's a good idea to make
that stuff all the job of the nursery nurses (except for banding of
course), but then I have no say in the matter, and lately there is so
much turnover in the nursing staff and so many agency nurses working
there, that it just doesn't pay to question anything, because
everybody's incredibly cranky.

Anna Meenan, MD

>in my hospital (high volume, tertiary care academic center) the
>default is to put the baby on the mom's abdomen and leave it there
>for quite some time. Drying, initial assessment, id bands etc are
>done with the babe on the mom's abdomen. The nurses have no problem
>with this. This is so common that many of the residents don't know
>how to handle a baby that is NOT going to mom's belly......
>
>vit K, eye prophylaxis, weight, etc are not done on the labor
>floor....they wait until the baby and mom have gone to the
>postpartum floor.
>
>Betsy Hyde CNM
>Branford, CT
>
>
>On Jun 22, 2006, at 6:28 PM, D. Ashley Hill wrote:
>
>>It's been my experience at several institutions that the rate limiting
>>factor is how busy the nurses are. Nurses have a huge amount of
>>paperwork and often have several patients in active labor at the same
>>time, so they can become agitated when I hand the newborn to the mom for
>>skin to skin contact and to begin breastfeeding. I've seen nurses
>>pacing back and forth, exasperated, until they come up with an excuse to
>>grab the baby and start in with the vitamin K, eye drops, footprints,
>>weight, temp, etc. We have worked hard over the years to get out of
>>this mindset and to a significant degree it's working. There are
>>diehards, however.

use when must restrict search to only the ob-gyn-l forum...
Enter search keywords:
	Returns per screen: Require all keywords: