A few months ago we explained that many premature babies who could not survive died alone, largely because of the operation of those hospitals that veto the parents' entrance, setting schedules for visits.
Some time ago I learned that something similar can happen when babies considered “not viable” are born. They are babies born with severe problems, whose life expectancy is a few hours or a few minutes.
You probably never wondered what happens when such a baby is born. Today I will try to explain how these babies die (because it doesn't seem logical to me), although I notice that I can hurt the sensibility of some people.
If parents want to be with babies
Unfortunately, nature is not infallible and occasionally a baby is born with a problem or malformation that makes it incompatible with life. It is said that they are "unfeasible" babies (in the middle of the space because it gives me little trouble to talk about them like that) because in a few minutes or in a few hours they die.
If parents want to be with them they allow them to be with them. They go to the room, the parents with the baby, and there they stay together until the baby dies. This is the ideal situation because it allows parents to say goodbye, talk to the baby, explain what they want, hug him, cradle him and let him say goodbye to the world that he will only see a moment with dignity.
However, there are times when doctors do not allow this to happen, as in the case of Melilla's premature twins, who were born and died one day in 2006 and whose case is in court these days because the parents considered their children they could still be alive if they had been allowed to be with them.
There are more similar cases, of professionals who are probably trying to protect parents, so that they do not suffer, convincing them that it is better that they do not see it (similar to when children are protected from seeing the dead grandfather, for example), leaving to the baby where the parents cannot enter.
There the parents do not know where the baby is, they surely believe that someone is with them, or that they are in an incubator, or covered in a crib, waiting for the tragic outcome to arrive. The parents, meanwhile, wait in the room waiting for someone to approach them to tell them that "it's already gone."
If parents don't want to be with babies
I will not go to judge the parents, because each couple knows the situation and the reasons for making one or the other decision, but there are parents who prefer not to be with the baby in their last hours.
I cannot explain it in the first person because I have not worked attending births, but I have investigated the subject a bit and, in addition to hearing it from the mouth of a fellow nurse, I have been able to read on the internet some confirmation that it is done in several places (sometimes This is explained by health people and other parents involved): babies who do not spend their first and last hours with their parents, because their parents do not want or because, despite wanting, professionals have decided not to allow parents to be with them, they spend them alone, naked, on a countertop, until they die.
It is understood that they will not survive, they will not be able to see a new day dawn, so it seems that care is not offered to the baby so as not to lengthen something that should happen in a few minutes or hours.
I understand the argument, I understand that if your parents do not want to be with him there is no one who can be with the baby, but I am very sad to know that they are naked (Covering them will cause them to have a better temperature and live longer), that the nurse only approaches from time to time to see if she has already died and Above all I am sorry to know that they die alone.
No to paternalism
I have been able to read some fathers and mothers say that if they know that nobody was with them, if they know that they were going to die naked and alone, they would have done something to avoid it. Some health professionals usually act with a marked paternalism inherited from previous decades in which it is they who decide what is best for users.
They do not let the parents in when they are going to harm a child "so that he does not see you here and does not understand that we hurt him and you do nothing", they do not let a mother see his daughter, who is born dead, because "Eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel" and in many places they also do not let the newborn baby see that in a while he has to die, with the same intention, that the parents do not suffer.
However, when you say goodbye to someone, you do it because you know him, because you have shared someone with him and you want to say goodbye because you feel that way. Parents should always be able to be with their children, to share the minutes or hours that are left of their lives. They should be able to talk and cradle you, with no one to tell you that "you better not see it." That way they can meet their baby, they can feel like mother, father and son and they can say goodbye, which is the first step to be able to turn the page in the future.
If it is the parents who decide not to see it perfect, but they are the ones who decide it, nobody else. And if so, please do your best, dear health professionals, to get nobody ever dies alone.
