Safer, less expensive maternity care is slowly taking hold. America spends a larger percentage of its gross domestic product on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet its citizens aren’t healthier for it. This is especially true when it comes to childbirth…
…United Healthcare found that 48 percent of newborns admitted to the NICU were from scheduled deliveries, many of them before 39 weeks. When doctors and hospitals curbed the practice, the insurer saw a 46 percent decline in NICU admissions in just three months…
Wow… Many hospitals still have a long way to go to be baby & mother friendly, but I didn’t know anyone was still THIS far behind! Shouldn’t they be required to keep up with current research?
The hospital where women give birth like it’s 1979
So now that I am feeling better, getting bigger and feeling the baby wiggle and kick more, the idea that I will soon be giving birth is becoming more real to me…
…She explained that the hospital does offer what she called “modified rooming in,” meaning that the baby can stay in the mother’s room as long as the mother or another adult is awake at the time. But if the mom wants to sleep and Dad and Grandma have gone home for the night, the baby is taken to the nursery. I asked her how I would be able to nurse my baby if she were in the nursery during the night; how would I know if she began to stir and wanted to eat? The nurse answered that they always bring the babies to breastfeeding moms “every two hours” to “get them on a schedule,” and because “that’s how often we recommend that newborns nurse…”