6 ms·

When my wife had our children, she (and I) were handed them, stuck in a room, then distrurbed for tests and briefings every 90 minutes for 3 days. How anyone c

When my wife had our children, she (and I) were handed them, stuck in a room, then distrurbed for tests and briefings every 90 minutes for 3 days. How anyone can recover from something as savage as childbirth is beyond me. It is no small miracle that she was able to walk, let alone care for two new babies and herself (with my help, but there's only so much I can do to assist with breastfeeding or healing of major trauma). At one point I asked all the nurses to leave and not come back for 6 hours in very angry tones.

NetOpWibby 2y ago
This mirrors my experience as well. It's so weird. Give us a break!!
- swayvil 2y ago
  This is standard hospital. Rest is the healer but they will not let you rest. Tests and loud noises, endlessly. It is quite insane.
  - astrange 2y ago
    For new mothers, they want to check that they're still alive and haven't started silently bleeding out, in which case they soon won't be alive.
    - swayvil 2y ago
      Yes, I know. But restful healing is important too. And it has a good track record, better than the doctors in fact. They should work around the healing instead of interfering with it.
      - haccount 2y ago
        No one will win a malpractice lawsuit over lost sleep, different story for lost lives.
        HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        That's not really true.
    - derefr 2y ago
      Surely there's yet another kind of machine they could hook up, that could silently monitor you for blood loss / internal bleeding? Especially if they know where to expect that potential bleeding to appear? (The probe for that one would probably be pretty uncomfortable while you're awake, but that doesn't matter if they let you sleep!)
      - refurb 2y ago
        Not much replaces a physical examination with the physician or nurse present. Serious complications can be quite subtle that unless you answer questions, they may be missed. Having someone come in, listen to your heart and lungs, ask a few questions can't really be replaced with machines.
        derefr 2y ago
        I accept the answering-questions part — but it might be just barely possible today to build an "automatic stethoscope" machine, that sits there continuously listening to your heart and lungs, feeding the audio through an ML model, and alerting if it "hears" anything odd, no? (It wouldn't even need to know what the odd thing represents; just that it's out-of-expectation enough to require someone to come over and check on you! A bit like asking a family's child to watch grandma while you speak to the mom and dad. All you want the child to do, is to freak out and get your attention if grandma does anything other than what she was already doing!)
        sangnoir 2y ago
        A smart stethoscope won't monitor consciousness and lucidity, which are vital signals.
        derefr 2y ago
        Okay? I already said "I accept the answering-questions part." Doctors not having to manually probe any signs of heart/lung problems each time they're in the room, would mean that they get either get more time to test each patient for consciousness/lucidity; get time to check on more patients; or (my preferred option) are able to make each check-session shorter and less invasive (no need to sit the patient up to listen to their lungs through their back, for example), and thus less disturbing of a patient's sleep quality (because it's easier to go back to sleep after a short conversation, when you haven't had your blood pressure spike from sitting up.)
  - animal_spirits 2y ago
    Understand that there are so many complications that can happen after pregnancy that put the mother at risk that can’t just be mitigated by sleep
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - ConcernedCoder 2y ago
    almost like it's a business and they don't want to lose any customers...
yieldcrv 2y ago
I stayed in a nice suite in a hotel once and it was the same until I put the do not disturb sign on the door It was like they were obsessed with busy work, I couldn’t tell if they didn’t want me there or if this was VIP treatment to them It was in another country
- derefr 2y ago
  Were you in your suite in the late morning? Hotels usually assume that that's the time tourists are most likely to be out about town, so they try to cram every type of cleaning and maintenance into that period. Hotels also schedule their check-out + check-in times to leave a gap around this period, so that at least some percentage of their suites will be "between guests" each day for a few hours, and thus able to be deep-cleaned. But if that doesn't happen — e.g. if the whole hotel is booked for a convention weekend, and it's the Saturday and nobody's checking out that day — then the cleaning staff that normally does the deep cleans will be hunting around for minor stuff to do so they can look busy.
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    I travel a lot and hadn't had that experience, but I usually don't book suites that nice
willcipriano 2y ago
We had to keep our daughter on a photocopier looking device for bilirubin as well as the tests. Nobody told me how common this is so I also got to enjoy a feeling of panic and dread while that was going on. Plus my boss kept calling me.
- globalise83 2y ago
  "Congratulations on your baby, but you have more important things to deliver"
  - nehal3m 2y ago
    Yeah like a 2 weeks notice.
- fuzzy_biscuit 2y ago
  Phototherapy is so scary looking, but the NICU nurses made it clear to my wife and I that everything was going to be fine. That said, seeing your newborn in that state after you just welcomed them to the world is a real brain blast of trauma. I still remember the feeling as you described: hollow dread and fear.
dugmartin 2y ago
The same thing happened to my mom in her 50s after 6 hour quadruple bypass surgery. They basically kept her awake for two days doing tests every hour after her surgery. She eventually started hallucinating from lack of sleep. It just seems so inhumane.
- swayvil 2y ago
  Doctors are a unique type. So excruciatingly educated. So utterly disconnected.
  - rsyring 2y ago
    They have different priorities, especially with major interventions. First priority, make sure you don't die. Sleep and recovery are down the list a bit. Disconnected? Probably. But I think that's intended and part of the current medical model. It's not necessarily a bad thing when focusing on long term positive outcomes in aggregate. But it certainly feels inhumane at times to the individual and their loved ones.
    - derefr 2y ago
      > First priority, make sure you don't die. Sleep and recovery are down the list a bit. But lack of sleep can impair immunity and disturb blood pressure and heart rhythm. Keeping someone with major trauma under stress (like being constantly awake) can make them more likely to die.
      - adrianN 2y ago
        Everything in medicine is a tradeoff
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      We never once saw a doctor. It was all nurses, mandatory education, paperwork, blood tests, vital checks, moving rooms, etc. At one point we were trying to sleep and a breastfeeding assistant stopped by. Super helpful that they can stop by, but jeez just coordinate for a 4 hour block where we're not disturbed.
katzenversteher 2y ago
For us it was our baby daugther herself who kept us awake. For months we didn't have more than 2 hours of undisturbed sleep. After like 3 or 4 months we had around 4 hours of undisturbed sleep for a looong time. Now she's three and we sometimes get a full night of sleep but several times a week we get woken up at around 3 a clock at night by our daugther complaining about ghosts or something like that.
- interludead 2y ago
  It’s a unique kind of sleep deprivation
  - katzenversteher 2y ago
    Indeed. I absolutely love my daughter but I think having her made me and my wife feel at least 10 years older. I always wanted two kids but now it makes me afraid and I honestly believe I would not survive a second one. At least not a similar like my daughter. She's super cute, intelligent and active but also extremely demanding and had a lot of problems with dermatitis, tummy aches, KISS syndrome and other stuff that made her not sleep well and cry a lot (and she's super loud). It also made me respect single parents 10000 times more than before. I can't imagine handling a situation like that alone.
    - interludead 2y ago
      I totally get the respect for single parents; it’s mind-blowing how they manage
    - nkrisc 2y ago
      I can tell you that the challenges of raising kids does not scale linearly with child count, it’s exponential.
    - anonfornoreason 2y ago
      I thought the same as you and delayed having a second kid as a result. Ended up having two more. The second kid was so much different than the first, slept fine, is way more emotionally regulated, etc. I regret my fear based decision making to delay. The third kid is somewhere between the first two. Fear based decisions don’t always lead to the best outcomes, though I am in no way dismissing the fear :)
derefr 2y ago
> then distrurbed for tests and briefings every 90 minutes for 3 days How odd. Why do hospitals not cluster these interactions together — the "while I've got you here..." experience?
- m_a_u 2y ago
  Depending on the situation, it's necessary to check the status of the patient every hour or so. If a condition carries e.g. an increased risk of stroke, there is no way to check for it except asking the patient to move and talk. A good night of sleep is valuable, but if you wake up with a severe paralysis and after the time window that allows e.g. removal of a clot, it's been too high a price for a few nights of good sleep
  - derefr 2y ago
    Sure, the tests I get. It was the briefings that seem weird to not cluster. In the case of a pregnancy, I'm assuming these "briefings" are things like trying to teach the new parent things they'll need to know when they go home; or giving them status updates about tests done on their new baby if they're in the NICU, and so forth. These all seem like things that could wait. Is the point to use the infodumping as an excuse to do the tests?
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  They usually do. While it could be the case the hospital is just poorly managed, it's hard to say without knowing the specifics of each case. I don't know what all those "briefings" were about but there could have been medical reasons for tests every 90 minutes. Honestly, the truth is hospitals are designed to do this. The entire purpose of the place is to have people moved into it so that these constant checks and examinations as well as treatments can be done most efficiently. The idea is to rapidly notice and react to changes in the patient's condition. In programming terms, the core function of a hospital is to poll and update the patient's state in a loop that runs while consent is given and until cured or dead. The polling frequency is calibrated according to knowledge of the patient's general condition and the specific pathology being treated. If you know the patient could bleed out and die after some surgical procedure, you want to check periodically that this is not happening. How frequently do you check? Depends on what you predict could happen. If you think the worst that could happen is a small and slow bleeding, then you can check less often. If you think there's risk of major bleeding, then you want to check frequently, possibly even constantly.
infecto 2y ago
I am always surprised the maternity hotel of china has not become more popular. Seems like a really great use of money to help both mother and child.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  You have to imagine how much it'd cost, and how many lawsuits there would be when someone dies.
dghughes 2y ago
My Dad was in palliative care and there wasn't a period of any more than 10 minutes where there wasn't interruption. I'm glad he had constant care but it was almost quite literally constant. As son and father in an end of life situation there was no gap to contemplate or allow us to connect it was drugs injection, food, check if he ate, back again, pick up tray, more drugs, check on his breathing, bathroom break (needed assistance). Dad was probably OK with it but we never had a chance to just have a moment and possibly say something we never would have. He died at 8:40pm on my birthday of all days as I sat next to him.
- endemic 2y ago
  I'm glad you were able to be with him when he passed.
uxp100 2y ago
That is not how it always goes. We had sustained periods of sleep and time alone following delivery. My partner actually wasn’t a huge fan of her OB before the delivery but thought she was great during. Loved the combo of kind and gentle nurses and a doctor coming in and just ordering her around. Kinda personal trainer vibes. We made it clear we wanted to be left alone over night, had reasons for why (neurological issues that are exacerbated by poor sleep) and they largely respected that. Maybe if we didn’t have that excuse it would have been worse. Shit, even the vending machine salads were pretty good. Didn’t love sleeping on a foam bench for 5 days, but we felt quite positive about the delivery center we had our child at in the US.
farkanoid 2y ago
Having a similar experience with our first child this week. Almost a full day of labour only to have a c-section at the very end due to complications. Even the c-section seemed absolutly brutal, at one point I was convinced one of the surgeons placed his foot on the table for leverage, given how much movement there was to her body. As if the physical trauma wasn't enough, being in a room with multiple first-time parents struggling to breastfeed as both they and their children cried, then being visited and probed every hour by medical staff with ineffective pain relief, /and/ having work out how to care for your child when the only communication path is basically through an amplitude modulated scream - Honestly, I've had some low points in my life, I thought I had a high tolerance for physical and emotional pain, but I can only describe what my wife experienced this week as total, crushing anguish.

NetOpWibby 2y ago

This mirrors my experience as well. It's so weird. Give us a break!!

swayvil 2y ago
This is standard hospital. Rest is the healer but they will not let you rest. Tests and loud noises, endlessly. It is quite insane.
- astrange 2y ago
  For new mothers, they want to check that they're still alive and haven't started silently bleeding out, in which case they soon won't be alive.
  - swayvil 2y ago
    Yes, I know. But restful healing is important too. And it has a good track record, better than the doctors in fact. They should work around the healing instead of interfering with it.
    - haccount 2y ago
      No one will win a malpractice lawsuit over lost sleep, different story for lost lives.
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        That's not really true.
  - derefr 2y ago
    Surely there's yet another kind of machine they could hook up, that could silently monitor you for blood loss / internal bleeding? Especially if they know where to expect that potential bleeding to appear? (The probe for that one would probably be pretty uncomfortable while you're awake, but that doesn't matter if they let you sleep!)
    - refurb 2y ago
      Not much replaces a physical examination with the physician or nurse present. Serious complications can be quite subtle that unless you answer questions, they may be missed. Having someone come in, listen to your heart and lungs, ask a few questions can't really be replaced with machines.
      - derefr 2y ago
        I accept the answering-questions part — but it might be just barely possible today to build an "automatic stethoscope" machine, that sits there continuously listening to your heart and lungs, feeding the audio through an ML model, and alerting if it "hears" anything odd, no? (It wouldn't even need to know what the odd thing represents; just that it's out-of-expectation enough to require someone to come over and check on you! A bit like asking a family's child to watch grandma while you speak to the mom and dad. All you want the child to do, is to freak out and get your attention if grandma does anything other than what she was already doing!)
        sangnoir 2y ago
        A smart stethoscope won't monitor consciousness and lucidity, which are vital signals.
        derefr 2y ago
        Okay? I already said "I accept the answering-questions part." Doctors not having to manually probe any signs of heart/lung problems each time they're in the room, would mean that they get either get more time to test each patient for consciousness/lucidity; get time to check on more patients; or (my preferred option) are able to make each check-session shorter and less invasive (no need to sit the patient up to listen to their lungs through their back, for example), and thus less disturbing of a patient's sleep quality (because it's easier to go back to sleep after a short conversation, when you haven't had your blood pressure spike from sitting up.)
- animal_spirits 2y ago
  Understand that there are so many complications that can happen after pregnancy that put the mother at risk that can’t just be mitigated by sleep
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ConcernedCoder 2y ago
  almost like it's a business and they don't want to lose any customers...

yieldcrv 2y ago

I stayed in a nice suite in a hotel once and it was the same until I put the do not disturb sign on the door It was like they were obsessed with busy work, I couldn’t tell if they didn’t want me there or if this was VIP treatment to them It was in another country

derefr 2y ago
Were you in your suite in the late morning? Hotels usually assume that that's the time tourists are most likely to be out about town, so they try to cram every type of cleaning and maintenance into that period. Hotels also schedule their check-out + check-in times to leave a gap around this period, so that at least some percentage of their suites will be "between guests" each day for a few hours, and thus able to be deep-cleaned. But if that doesn't happen — e.g. if the whole hotel is booked for a convention weekend, and it's the Saturday and nobody's checking out that day — then the cleaning staff that normally does the deep cleans will be hunting around for minor stuff to do so they can look busy.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  I travel a lot and hadn't had that experience, but I usually don't book suites that nice

willcipriano 2y ago

We had to keep our daughter on a photocopier looking device for bilirubin as well as the tests. Nobody told me how common this is so I also got to enjoy a feeling of panic and dread while that was going on. Plus my boss kept calling me.

globalise83 2y ago
"Congratulations on your baby, but you have more important things to deliver"
- nehal3m 2y ago
  Yeah like a 2 weeks notice.
fuzzy_biscuit 2y ago
Phototherapy is so scary looking, but the NICU nurses made it clear to my wife and I that everything was going to be fine. That said, seeing your newborn in that state after you just welcomed them to the world is a real brain blast of trauma. I still remember the feeling as you described: hollow dread and fear.

dugmartin 2y ago

The same thing happened to my mom in her 50s after 6 hour quadruple bypass surgery. They basically kept her awake for two days doing tests every hour after her surgery. She eventually started hallucinating from lack of sleep. It just seems so inhumane.

swayvil 2y ago
Doctors are a unique type. So excruciatingly educated. So utterly disconnected.
- rsyring 2y ago
  They have different priorities, especially with major interventions. First priority, make sure you don't die. Sleep and recovery are down the list a bit. Disconnected? Probably. But I think that's intended and part of the current medical model. It's not necessarily a bad thing when focusing on long term positive outcomes in aggregate. But it certainly feels inhumane at times to the individual and their loved ones.
  - derefr 2y ago
    > First priority, make sure you don't die. Sleep and recovery are down the list a bit. But lack of sleep can impair immunity and disturb blood pressure and heart rhythm. Keeping someone with major trauma under stress (like being constantly awake) can make them more likely to die.
    - adrianN 2y ago
      Everything in medicine is a tradeoff
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    We never once saw a doctor. It was all nurses, mandatory education, paperwork, blood tests, vital checks, moving rooms, etc. At one point we were trying to sleep and a breastfeeding assistant stopped by. Super helpful that they can stop by, but jeez just coordinate for a 4 hour block where we're not disturbed.

katzenversteher 2y ago

For us it was our baby daugther herself who kept us awake. For months we didn't have more than 2 hours of undisturbed sleep. After like 3 or 4 months we had around 4 hours of undisturbed sleep for a looong time. Now she's three and we sometimes get a full night of sleep but several times a week we get woken up at around 3 a clock at night by our daugther complaining about ghosts or something like that.

interludead 2y ago
It’s a unique kind of sleep deprivation
- katzenversteher 2y ago
  Indeed. I absolutely love my daughter but I think having her made me and my wife feel at least 10 years older. I always wanted two kids but now it makes me afraid and I honestly believe I would not survive a second one. At least not a similar like my daughter. She's super cute, intelligent and active but also extremely demanding and had a lot of problems with dermatitis, tummy aches, KISS syndrome and other stuff that made her not sleep well and cry a lot (and she's super loud). It also made me respect single parents 10000 times more than before. I can't imagine handling a situation like that alone.
  - interludead 2y ago
    I totally get the respect for single parents; it’s mind-blowing how they manage
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    I can tell you that the challenges of raising kids does not scale linearly with child count, it’s exponential.
  - anonfornoreason 2y ago
    I thought the same as you and delayed having a second kid as a result. Ended up having two more. The second kid was so much different than the first, slept fine, is way more emotionally regulated, etc. I regret my fear based decision making to delay. The third kid is somewhere between the first two. Fear based decisions don’t always lead to the best outcomes, though I am in no way dismissing the fear :)

derefr 2y ago

> then distrurbed for tests and briefings every 90 minutes for 3 days How odd. Why do hospitals not cluster these interactions together — the "while I've got you here..." experience?

m_a_u 2y ago
Depending on the situation, it's necessary to check the status of the patient every hour or so. If a condition carries e.g. an increased risk of stroke, there is no way to check for it except asking the patient to move and talk. A good night of sleep is valuable, but if you wake up with a severe paralysis and after the time window that allows e.g. removal of a clot, it's been too high a price for a few nights of good sleep
- derefr 2y ago
  Sure, the tests I get. It was the briefings that seem weird to not cluster. In the case of a pregnancy, I'm assuming these "briefings" are things like trying to teach the new parent things they'll need to know when they go home; or giving them status updates about tests done on their new baby if they're in the NICU, and so forth. These all seem like things that could wait. Is the point to use the infodumping as an excuse to do the tests?
matheusmoreira 2y ago
They usually do. While it could be the case the hospital is just poorly managed, it's hard to say without knowing the specifics of each case. I don't know what all those "briefings" were about but there could have been medical reasons for tests every 90 minutes. Honestly, the truth is hospitals are designed to do this. The entire purpose of the place is to have people moved into it so that these constant checks and examinations as well as treatments can be done most efficiently. The idea is to rapidly notice and react to changes in the patient's condition. In programming terms, the core function of a hospital is to poll and update the patient's state in a loop that runs while consent is given and until cured or dead. The polling frequency is calibrated according to knowledge of the patient's general condition and the specific pathology being treated. If you know the patient could bleed out and die after some surgical procedure, you want to check periodically that this is not happening. How frequently do you check? Depends on what you predict could happen. If you think the worst that could happen is a small and slow bleeding, then you can check less often. If you think there's risk of major bleeding, then you want to check frequently, possibly even constantly.

infecto 2y ago

I am always surprised the maternity hotel of china has not become more popular. Seems like a really great use of money to help both mother and child.

jvanderbot 2y ago
You have to imagine how much it'd cost, and how many lawsuits there would be when someone dies.

dghughes 2y ago

My Dad was in palliative care and there wasn't a period of any more than 10 minutes where there wasn't interruption. I'm glad he had constant care but it was almost quite literally constant. As son and father in an end of life situation there was no gap to contemplate or allow us to connect it was drugs injection, food, check if he ate, back again, pick up tray, more drugs, check on his breathing, bathroom break (needed assistance). Dad was probably OK with it but we never had a chance to just have a moment and possibly say something we never would have. He died at 8:40pm on my birthday of all days as I sat next to him.

endemic 2y ago
I'm glad you were able to be with him when he passed.

uxp100 2y ago

That is not how it always goes. We had sustained periods of sleep and time alone following delivery. My partner actually wasn’t a huge fan of her OB before the delivery but thought she was great during. Loved the combo of kind and gentle nurses and a doctor coming in and just ordering her around. Kinda personal trainer vibes. We made it clear we wanted to be left alone over night, had reasons for why (neurological issues that are exacerbated by poor sleep) and they largely respected that. Maybe if we didn’t have that excuse it would have been worse. Shit, even the vending machine salads were pretty good. Didn’t love sleeping on a foam bench for 5 days, but we felt quite positive about the delivery center we had our child at in the US.

farkanoid 2y ago

Having a similar experience with our first child this week. Almost a full day of labour only to have a c-section at the very end due to complications. Even the c-section seemed absolutly brutal, at one point I was convinced one of the surgeons placed his foot on the table for leverage, given how much movement there was to her body. As if the physical trauma wasn't enough, being in a room with multiple first-time parents struggling to breastfeed as both they and their children cried, then being visited and probed every hour by medical staff with ineffective pain relief, /and/ having work out how to care for your child when the only communication path is basically through an amplitude modulated scream - Honestly, I've had some low points in my life, I thought I had a high tolerance for physical and emotional pain, but I can only describe what my wife experienced this week as total, crushing anguish.