Hospital Stay Questions

[fireshifter]

Can someone please tell me why I have to stay in the hospital for 2 nights following vaginal baby's birth? As I understand it, birthing centers let their patients go home day of, right? If I have absolutely NO complications and baby is healthy, why the heck can't I go home? I REALLY don't want to go to the hospital for birth anyway but it's either that or an unassisted birth at home and this is my first so I don't want to do unassisted. I am vegan (for health reasons) and don't eat anything with added oils or fats so I'm already bringing my own food and two days is a LOT of days to bring food for, not to mention having to putz around a hospital for that long. Are they doing tests or something during that time? If so, what are they testing?

I'm so irritated....I'm really considering leaving AMA if everything goes well for labor and delivery. Will my doctor shoot me?
Would love to hear your stories.

[mamazig]

Hi there -- we just got home Sunday afternoon after giving birth around 2 in the morning Sat -- they said we had to stay at least 24 hours -- something about the PKU test, I think?? I had hemorhagging complications on my first birth and I know that hemor. can occur within the first 24 hours so I think keeping an eye on mama might be another reason. ?? Other than those two things, I don't know why they would keep ya. Check out the Birth and Beyond forum too -- there's a recent thread on there about this. Good luck!

[earthmama369]

It totally depends on the hospital -- some still have that rule (24-48 hours), the one we're using has a short stay option, designed by a mother of 3 who pointed out the problems and stress of a parent of more than one staying away from home for so long. So a patient there can take the option of going home after 6 hours if they had a vaginal birth with no lingering problems to be monitored and if the baby is doing fine, but this hospital is a Baby Friendly certified one and they follow a birthing center model rather than a strictly labor ward one.

I did read on another thread recently -- can't remember which one or where, sorry! -- that you always have the option of signing yourself out "against medical advice" and they can't keep you or your baby against your expressed will. Some mamas said they were told by nurses that their insurance wouldn't cover their delivery and stay if they left AMA, but upon checking with their insurance companies they found out that absolutely wasn't true. You do have to get someone to remove the security device from the baby that would sound an alarm at the doors if anyone tried to take the baby out of the ward, but there again, I don't think they can refuse against your expressed will.

[miziki]

Originally Posted by fireshifter

Can someone please tell me why I have to stay in the hospital for 2 nights following vaginal baby's birth... If I have absolutely NO complications and baby is healthy, why the heck can't I go home?...

I'm so irritated....I'm really considering leaving AMA if everything goes well for labor and delivery.

It's *your* choice, despite what anyone else might try to tell you. The hospital folk might not LIKE your choice, but truly, it's not theirs to make - you can leave AMA. They might try to threaten about PKU, but even *that* shouldn't be done until AFTER 24 hrs have passed and babe is nursing -- you can wait 48 or 36 hours to get PKU test taken. Either you just bring the baby back in or perhaps your ped (if you've got a ped) can do it in his/her office?

Anyway - if you want to leave, I think they gotta let ya.

[zjandosmom]

I stayed 24 hrs just so the PKU would be "valid". Mw was willing to let us leave 6hrs after birth, but pointed out it might be easier to wait the 24hrs so I wouldn't have to be sure to have her in the peds office withing the first 24-48 hrs. I have 3 others so this seemed to make sense to me. It is not fun....food stinks, no sleep, boring, etc. 24 hrs was about all I could take !

[danav]

I started a big thread about this a couple weeks ago...we're planning a birth center or possibly home birth, but just in case, I was getting info from the nearest hospital (I have fast births and we're concerned we might not have to to get to our birth center 1 1/2 hrs away, and if the baby comes before my midwife sister arrives from out of state we might have to head to the hospital instead). I was told that there was no way we would be discharged less than 24 hrs post partum. No problem, I thought...we can always leave AMA and my insurance company has already told me that would NOT affect benefits in any way, they would still pay for the services billed whether I left with a discharge paper or not. WELL....the hospital then told me that sure, I could leave AMA, but MY BABY COULD NOT. When I questioned that, I was told they would most likely call CPS on us if I tried to take the baby home before discharge!! : I asked my birth center about this, and the nurse practitioner there told me that she has no idea how they can legally do it, but she has known hospitals in our area to not only call CPS, but to also attempt to arrest the mom!

My own pediatrician has told me SHE would be willing to discharge the baby in just a few hours if all is well, but there's no way to know if she would be the ped on call when the birth happens, so there's a big chance we'd get someone else who would refuse to let us go home.

This is one on the big reasons I want to stay OUT of the hospital. I will be absolutely CRAZY upset if I have to stay a minimum of 24 hrs with a perfectly healthy baby after a perfectly normal birth, but I sure don't want CPS banging on my door, either, because I know even totally innocent people have had terrible problems once CPS gets involved in their lives.

So just be careful if you decide to leave AMA - I've heard many women on these boards say they did just that with no problem, but now with what our hospital here has told me I'd be really scared to try it.

ETA: my birth center does the PKU at a one week follow up visit...so if we have the baby at the birth center or at home, that's when he'll get his PKU test.

[hottmama]

My oldest was born in a hospital, and we left when he was 12 hrs. old. We would have left earlier (the ped. ok'd the baby's discharge at 6 hrs.), but had to wait for my midwife to come check me out. We returned to the hospital on his 3rd or 4thday for the PKU test. My new guy was born unassisted, and we took him into the pediatrician at 1 wk. for a newborn well-baby, and they did the PKU then.

[witchbaby]

we transferred from home to the hospital at 5:30am on dec. 28th. i gave birth at 7:16pm. they claimed i had a fever while pushing (ahem, it was about 80 degrees in the friggin' room and i was PUSHING OUT A NINE POUND BABY, i think i got a little warm!) and kept trying to push antibiotics on us. we decided we were going to leave the next day. finally, a doctor agreed if we would stay the full 24 hours from the birth, so we checked out shortly after 8 on the 29th. however, if we hadn't talked them into it, we would have left ama (against medical advice) that same day.

[Tofu the Geek]

I don't see why you have to. I left 2.5 hours after DD was born. I could not wait to get out of there and into our own bed (it was 1:30am). I had zero complications and baby was fine. They were about to transfer me to my "rooming in" room and I said "uh, no I'm going home". The nurses checked with the doctor if I could go home, and the doctor asked me, "do you want to go home", I replied, "yes" and the doctor said "well then she can go home". I did have a midwife who they knew would be checking on me the next day and that I could call with questions, that might have helped her decision to let me leave, but maybe not.

[MamaTaraX]

You can sign out AMA whenever you chose. A slightly better option is to wait a couple hours post-partum and ask your doctor if you can leave. 9 times out of 10, they'll say you can if everything is going okay. The general reasons why women stay 48 hours are related to insurance and health. First, years ago women stayed for a week post-partum. THen insurance started being a PITA and realized that most women could safely be released sooner, so insurance cracked it down to 48 hours for most births (some places its 72 for c/s) In addition, healthwise, if big problems are going ot occur, they will generally appear within 24 hours post-partum. If you're there, you can be watched and baby too. There are good things about staying the whole time, such as, if you need help with breastfeeding. IF you might not get hands-on help at home, it's available at most hospitals and you'll have access to it the whole time you are there. Really though, if you are hving no medical issues and baby isn't either, there's no reason to not be released within a few hours of giving birth. Just remember that you feel fine and dandy for a few hours then you are wiped out, so you need to make sure that if you do leave early, you can truly go home and just veg out. Also be aware that some hospitals will have a cow if you want to sign out AMA and tell you that *you* can sign out but you can't take the baby. Its a scare tactic. You can sign your baby out as well, but they can very easily scare you into thinking that you cannot. There are places that can or will capp CPS on you for taking a baby AMA pre-48 hours but not everywhere does that and CPS generally doesn't follow up on such calls. Happy birthing to you!

Namaste, Tara

[AAK]

At my last birth my mw released me immediately, the hold up was really the policy about releasing the baby. Thank goodness our ped was the one on call so I got him to release Kayla too. All the "tests" etc can be done rather quickly. We were gone within 15 hours of delivery (should've been earlier but ped wanted a specialist to look at dds hip.) All in all, the nurse kept saying minimum 24 hours--but it was really up to our individual care providers. If I were you I would fill out the AMA. I hated waiting around the hospital to leave. (With my first I didn't mind, but I was having problems so actually needed help)

Amy

[Wugmama]

I had a homebirth planned, but 3.5 days after my water broke, we decided to go to the hospital. My baby was early and so we didn't have our GBS+ results back so I had to be treated as if I was positive. Mostly for that they wanted us to stay 48 hours. I tried to explain that I had been doing the hibicleanse thing every 4 hours but the resident wasn't impressed. However, the staff doc on at the hospital was Swedish, and I'm thinking she knew about that protocol, because after the resident talked to her he came back and said we could leave at 24 hours (we could have left sooner, you just have to sign out AMA - against medical advice). So we left just after 24 hours after the birth, with their blessing.

[cathynmatt]

I didn't read the responses so I don't know if this was brought up ~ some hospitals calls CPS if you leave AMA so maybe work something out with your doc beforehand? I know you're in Nebraska but don't know where ~ we aren't a very liberal state ~ be careful of the administration! You wouldn't want to get caught up in the CPS red tape! ((hugs))