Rooming In

Baby swapping is a horrible thing. All those months you dream of holding your baby, its hard to imagine coming home with a baby other than your own.

Some hospitals offer high tech ways to keep your baby from being swapped. They use foot printing, banding, tags that beep, like the leather coats in stores, personnel who wear certain types of outfits, and more.

I have some advice for all those about to be parents who are giving birth where nurseries are the norm...room in.

This typically isn't a problem for women having home births or birth center births. Some hospitals even offer Labor/Delivery/Recovery/Postpartum (LDRP) Rooms, where you spend your entire visit in the same room.

Rooming in can be done in a variety of ways. A lot of women choose to have full rooming in, where the baby stays with you the entire time. Some places offer partial rooming in where you can send the baby back to the nursery at night, specifying if you want to awakened for night time feedings or not, and with you during the day.

Many women say that the reason they choose to not have full time rooming in was that they wished to rest while in the hospital. Let me give you some advice, it isn't going to happen! For the most part you are bombarded with visitors, phone calls, hourly checks (at first), routine lab draws at 4 a.m. (Because your practitioner needs the results before they arrive at 7 a.m.), nurses waking you up to take your sleeping pills, and techs turning on lights in the middle of the night to check your pulse, temperature and BP.

Are there problems associated with rooming in? Yes, there are times you shouldn't be allowed to room in, for instance if you have a baby who needs intensive care (Although I would encourage you to pack up and go with!). Babies actually warm best skin-to-skin with either mom or dad, if they want hospitals can place a warmer over both. This prevents babies from spending time under french fry warmers with other babies. Pediatricians are usually willing to do exams in the rooms, if not mom, dad or someone else can go with the baby to ensure his/her safety. These are easily overcome with your birth plan.

This likelihood of your baby being switched is very small, but it doesn't take massive amounts of technology to protect your baby from being switched. Listening to moms and watching the babies are all that is really needed.

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