News

27th September 2005

Hospital bans cooing at babies

A West Yorkshire hospital has banned parents and visitors from cooing over newborn babies, saying it is breaching their human rights.

Managers at Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax have also asked visitors to the maternity wing not to question mothers about their labour.

In a statement they said staff had held an advice session to highlight the need for respect and dignity for patients. Cards were handed out to visitors headlined "Respect my baby", with a message underneath as written by a baby. "I am small and precious so treat me with privacy and respect," it said. "My parents ask you to treat my personal space with consideration. I deserve to be left undisturbed and protected against unwanted public view."

On one ward there is a doll featuring the message, "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"

But some mothers said they are astonished by the rules which stop people asking questions about their babies or looking at them in maternity wards.

Halifax Labour MP Linda Riordan said, "It is bureaucracy gone mad. All mothers want people to admire their babies because all babies are beautiful.

"But in a case where a mother did not want to answer questions it should be up to that individual to say so."

Hospital management tried to play down the initiative, insisting they were just common sense measures and not firm rules.

Debbie Lawson, neo-natal manager at the hospital's special care baby unit, said, "Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me.

"We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen."

A spokeswoman for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust said the advice was as much to do with reducing infection as it was upholding 'rights'.

In a statement she said, "Staff were wishing to highlight issues of potential confidentiality, especially for young babies and their parents in what can be emotional times.

"Infection control was also a key part of the message as the unit deals with very small babies with very vulnerable immune systems."

Belinda Phipps, chief executive of the National Childbirth Trust, said, "Babies like to interact and like to look at a human face. We need to treat the mother and baby as one unit. The mother should be able to say what she wants to happen with her baby.

"Some mothers think people cooing over their baby is fantastic and a lot of women do want to talk about their labour because it is a big experience.

"Some women take a very different approach and don't want anybody near their baby. It's wrong to dictate this approach to all women."

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