Mother Baby Couplet Care

[NSY4ME]

I work in a hospital that delivers about 350 per month! We are in the process of changing from newborn nurses and postpartum nurses, to mother baby couplet care. We have been cross-training each other since March, and have found a lot of resistance to change! I need your opinions, and suggestions! How many couplets do other hospitals assign? Does it differ from days to nights? How are the doctors reacting? How do you staff the Nsy?

[mother/babyRN, RN]

No night nursery DOES suck, and no offense, but the only people that want to room in are excited primips who don't know any better, or lactation consultants who believe it should be so. Any multip worth her salt knows she is not getting any rest once she goes home so back to the nursery they go! And, in our unit, where all of us rotate between all 3 areas and sometimes, on nights ARE staffing all three areas, I just hated it. Babies at the nurses station, so we were told by a liability expert, are NOT a good idea....What are you supposed to do when you have a code either with mommy or baby, or get dragged to delivery, BABYSIT??? (remember, that is STILL my pet peeve...:)

[fergus51]

Our unit does couplet care with the option of moving the baby to the nursery if the parents want that. Quite the opposite of mother/babyRN, I find that most women do want to keep the baby in the room with them. We also allow fathers to stay and set up a cot if they want to. I find it makes teaching, especially around breastfeeding and bathing a lot easier, and helps with bonding.

[mother/babyRN, RN]

Our dads can stay and unless we get slammed, our patients have private rooms too. In our area, the majority of people send their babies back to the nursery at night and sadly, that applies even to the breast feeding moms....I kept my kids with me. In our hospital they do have to go to the nursery for assessments, weights and hearing screens and usually spend most of the day and evening with their parents. I have had several patients tell me that they consider all day and all evening "rooming in" and night time is for sleep. And, lately, some patients don't arrange for alternative sibling care or have anyone to be there overnight in the event of a c/s...Just doesn't work for us...But, we also don't have a level 2 nursery so we need at least one nursery "just in case" We are at the point where our managers are considering suggesting that people bring in their own diapers and formula. I think that is pretty insulting, but that is another issue...