sterile water for baby baths

[brady123]

Our hospital has recently installed faucet in nursery which gives sterile water. the initial baby bath is done in the nursery with this water. For bath demos for our new moms, we have to get a basin (nonsterile) full of sterile water, cover this with cellophane (to keep heat) and take it to the mom's room. Has anyone else started this crazy practice? I think the latter especially sends the wrong message to our new moms.

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

That is about the lamest thing I have heard since washing mom's nipples with betadine before letting them nurse their babies. If some nurse came in to my room with a basin of sterile water to show me how to bath my baby I would be insulted. I am I dirty and too stupid to know how to bath a baby? I would understand that the nurse was just following hospital protocol, but I can guarantee the hospital would be getting a letter from me!

[SmilingBluEyes]

PS; I also encourage moms and dads not to let babies out of sight (unless they are very sick and initially go to the special care nursery for resuscitation and/or immediate treatment). This means, they have the right to ask for routine treatments/tests to be done in their rooms, or they can accompany the babies to the nursery to observe these. I tell them what we do and how the baby may react, and they are given the choice to observe or not (some don't want to witness PKU testing, for example). They have EVERY right to be there for these things----they are the parents, after all. And trust is important to me.

[LizzyL&DRN]

What if mom says no, she will bathe the baby? I had a nurse with my 3rd baby tell me that I couldn't bathe my baby (I gave the other two their 1st baths) because that is when she did her assessment. Not this time -- you can assess after I bathe my child. Seems silly but as a woman who just gave birth I thought it was important to give 1st baths. Gosh my first when to the nursery for breathing problems and I still was the first one to bathe her. The nurse just rubbed her off with a towel.

As for the sterile water, any one who has been in a delivery room or has children will say -- ha ha!!!!! My 3 survived just fine with mom giving a bath with plain, old tap water.

I always give the bath in the room w/ plain old "dirty" warm tap water. Sometimes if dad(or mom too) is into it, i'll let him soap his hands up and give baby a little massage bath. Don't think any of those babies died from having a bath with "dirty" tap water and parents w/ unsterile hands. How ridiculous!!!!

[NJNursing, ASN, RN]

We did the same as SmilingBluEyes. There was always mommy/baby contact immediately after birth. This way it gave us a chance to clean up after the delivery, the family could take photos or oogle the baby. The only time we delayed it is if the baby was having some sort of problem that warranted it to need O2 but not necessarily have to go to the NICU or if the mom is being stitched up. We typically didn't give the mom's the baby while being stitched - safety reason. I liked to delay the baths a little bit giving mom and baby a good 45 minutes to bond together and it was as long as I did a good job getting the baby really dry and de-gunked as possible beforehand. Then under the warmer until up to temp and back to mom, by by then they were often in that initial sleep phase and mom often took cat naps then too.