Questions about baby after delivery

Vitamin K

Eye ointment

PKU

Hep B

Circumcision

Spinal tap

bath

warmer

bottles

pacifiers

hearing test

separation of mother & baby -- baby is taken to nursery, sometimes for hours --bonding disrupted -- baby allowed to CIO

separation of mother & baby -- baby is in same room with mother, but mother is not holding it -- bonding disrupted -- baby may or may not be allowed to CIO

ANY routine test/procedure that this hospital might do that is not specified above

heel sticks for blood sugar testing. At least I think that is how they test for that, and I know they tested my daughter every few hours for the first day. She also had the Hep B shot in the hospital, but I gather that isn't necessarily routine. I did have to sign something in that case, so at least you will know that is coming and can refuse at the time. The blood sugar testing I didn't know was standard until after they started doing it.

This time around I had a homebirth and picked what I wanted done. I did have the PKU done when she was 5 days old. My ped says that she will have her first shots at her 2 month visit, and I'm going to have to decide how I'm going to handle the whole vax issue. I'd really like to push it off for awhile and refuse some of them altogether. She's supposed to have 3 shots and 5 different immunizations at her first visit. Yikes!

Don't forget sex changes! Each year, thousands of children are born as hermaphrodites and if they are taken to the nursery right away, often with the mother not even given a chance to look at them, they will be operated on to be the sex of the doctor's choice. This is another reason to never allow any separation.

And yes, the circ is often done without permission (I mean of the parent; it's always done without permission of the child!) so especially if you have a son, be watchful.

There is no reason a newborn baby needs a spinal tap, either, and those are still being done.

Another thing that is still done is the practice of hanging the baby upside down and slapping it. Specify that you will not allow this; that it is assault.

Oh yeah - one more - hospitals take NUDE PHOTOS of your child! They claim it's for some sort of "security" but I would not be surprised if there were something *else* going on. Insist on not allowing children to be forcibly held down and photographed naked. Or, say that you will allow it if you can have a naked photo of the nurse.

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Do what??? I've not been on these boards long and maybe I am super ignorant (and please forgive me if the following seems like an attack or something - it's not meant to be) but I just do not believe that babies are operated on (at least here in the US) to assign gender w/o parental consent. And circumcisions are also often done w/o parental consent? And nude photos? I just don't believe it.

I am certainly not saying you don't know - I am saying that I am shocked and would like to know more. Could you point me in the direction where I might find info about all this? If this is, indeed true...well, I hate to think about it.

The sex change stuff was in a human sexuality text. I don't remember the name, but I'm sure any current one would have info. The number they gave was 10,000 kids a year. Some with parental knowledge, some without. We also went over this issue in class and watched a bunch of documentaries about it. The teacher even said not to leave your baby alone with the hospital staff!

The circ without parents permission might happen more often outside of the US, but still, if I had a son in a busy hospital and they took him to the nursery without asking about circ, I would be very worried. Sometimes they are too "busy" to adhere to parental wishes. Examples of circ where the doctor just assumed the parents wanted it done can be found in Rosemary Romberg's Circumcision: The Painful Dilemma.

The nude photos happened at my hospital in Oregon. They said it was a law everywhere. If I weren't so out of my mind from pain and exhaustion, I might have put up more of a fight. Never again! I would ask your hospital if they do this.

Wow, this is an interesting thread. I have to say that untill my dd started having troubles (12-14 hours old) she never left me except for a second to be weighed, ohh and for about 2 minutes when I let DH hold her. She did get the eye junk and vitamin K, but they did that with her on my lap, and I would really like to learn more about denying these for baby #2. I had them hold off on the PKU and hearing exam and had them done at her 1 week ped appointment instead.

She did end up leaving me when she was 12 hours old, or rather we left the room TOGETHER. She got her stomach and lungs suctioned out (and they got a lot of gunk including blood (that looked old so we didn't worry too much) out of all three. She then wouldn't swallow and her blood sugar was drastically low so we went to the NICU for about 4 hours where they taught her to swallow...that is when she got her one and only ounce of formula in her life...as soon as they saw a swallow they had me latch her on and that was that... She was never out of my sight except when she was left in DH's or my mother's arms while I went to the bathroom, and this seemed to be completely normal for our hospital at least, they never tried to take her from me and everyone was more than willing to do all their normal exams with her laying on my chest/in my arms, they never suggested other wise. A nursery was never even offered to us.

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I believe it. I can back Greaseball up on this one. And yes, this happens here in the US. I saw a documentary, not about hermaphrodites, but about boys who are born with unusually small penises. Until quite recently, it was standard procedure to perform immediate sex changes on them, without "upsetting" the parents with the information. For a long time, it was accepted by the medical community that this was psychologically the best thing for the child. It has apparently finally come to their attention that it is not the best thing psychologically for the child after all, and now I guess *most* doctors consider it unethical. However, I believe there are some doctors still doing it. They interviewed one doctor who said, "it is psychologically less traumatic for a boy to live his life as a girl than it would be for a boy to go through life with such an unusually small penis." (That may not be verbatim.) I was shocked and appalled at hearing this doctor make such a statement on tv. As far as I can tell this guy still has a license and is still practicing medicine.

As far as circumcisions done without parental consent, I don't doubt it for a second!

edited to add: and people wonder why I insist on homebirth!

If I had it to do over I wouldn't let them do the stupid blood sugar checks. Between that and the bilirubin checks when she developed jaundice, DD came home with heels that looked like pincushions!

I went ahead and had them do the vit k and erythromyocin (antibiotic ointment for the eyes) BECAUSE she was C-sectioned, which is more physically traumatic in many ways and I figured she needed all the help she could get. The eye ointment I wouldn't have done had we not been in the hospital--protect your child from hospital germs any way you can!!! We did wait until after she'd had a bit of bonding time with both me and her daddy--our first nursing attempt in recovery and her bath, to be specific.

The PKU etc. newborn screen we went ahead and did, because while all the disorders it tests for are extremely rare, they are also treatable if caught early and severely debilitating or fatal if left untreated. And there was no extra heel poke because the nurse did it along with a bilirubin check they were going to do anyway. There is however no point in doing it until your child has started digesting milk, as shown by non-meconium poop, as it tests how the baby is metabolizing it. So don't let them do it until the day you're discharged.

The hospital I delivered at you have to sign a consent form for them to do a circumcision, and you have to sign a refusal for the hep B, which I did. They didn't hassle me about it at all.

As for the hermaphrodite thing, there is truth in it. I recently saw a documentary about it. A couple in one of the southern states had a son who was a hermaphrodite. He had a penis, a testicle, a poorly formed vagina, and an ovary. They wanted to keep him male as he had a fair chance of being functional as one, but had to fight tooth and nail with the hospital and doctors over it, as the medicos wanted to reassign him as female and do surgery. They did consent to a biopsy of the testicle, as the doctors told them there was a great likelihood of it becoming cancerous. This was done when he was a toddler. The biopsy came up negative for cancer, but the doctor removed the testicle anyway, and thence castrated the little boy! This happened in the late 90's.

I know if I had a child with an indeterminate sex, I'd follow the advice now advocated in the intersex (hermaphrotite) community and leave well enough alone until the child was old enough to understand the condition and make decisions for him/her self about whether he/she wanted surgery or what, and give assigned gender (name, etc.) to the child based on chromosomes.