Читать книгу First-Time Parent: The honest guide to coping brilliantly and staying sane in your baby’s first year - Lucy Atkins - Страница 33
Ways to cope with SCBU
ОглавлениеAsk for information, no matter how busy and cross the staff look.
Take breaks. Getting away for a walk or a bite to eat with your partner is crucial: SCBU is emotionally draining.
Remember it’s your baby. You can help care for her through this–ask staff to show you what you can do.
Don’t give up on bonding. Staff can show you how to touch and comfort your baby even when she’s in an incubator (she’ll recognise your voice and smell). Any skin-to-skin contact you can have is very valuable.
Understand the monitors: they are very sensitive and alarms tend to go off regularly. If you understand what they mean, you’ll feel less stressed.
Get clear feedback. If your baby has a setback, ask your doctor to rate it on a scale of one to ten. This will help you get a handle on how serious it is.
Be sensitive to others. Babies arrive all the time, so try to give other families privacy and train your visitors to observe the rules in SCBU.
Don’t give up on breastfeeding. Ask to see the hospital’s breastfeeding specialist and get her to show you exactly how–and how often–to use the breast pump so you can still feed your baby.
Visit your baby whenever you want. ‘SCBU is open twenty-four hours a day,’ says Lisa Hynes. ‘If you are still in hospital and you wake up at 3 a.m. and want to see your baby, then go and sit with her, stroke her head, do whatever you can do that makes you feel better. The nurses can be quite hostile or surprised at that time of the night, but I felt so strongly that they were my babies and if I were feeding them I would be up anyway. At night you feel the separation from the baby most keenly, so if you want to see them, stuff the frowning looks and go.’