You may have seen the BBC News story about the hospital in West Yorkshire that instituted a "no cooing over babies" policy. The subheading on the story makes it sound like the place has been commandeered by foamy-mouthed baby-rights advocates:

A West Yorkshire hospital has banned visitors from cooing at new-born babies over fears their human rights are being breached and to reduce infection.

I think the BBC news version is slanted a bit to make the hospital look more unreasonable than it is.

The local coverage in the Halifax Courier is a little more in-depth and offers a better collection of quotes from those involved, making it look more like the hospital was primarily concerned with the confidentiality interests of the mothers than anything else.

This tidbit from the Telegraph seems to support that:

Staff there had given visitors a card with a message purporting to come from a newborn baby. "I am small and precious so treat me with privacy and respect," the baby said. "My parents ask you to treat my personal space with consideration."

Still, I'm left to wonder exactly what led to this situation? Were there a lot of mums complaining about people asking questions? Perhaps a rash of unwed mothers who didn't want to discuss how the baby came about?

On the other hand, I can't for the life of me come up with a single sane reason for the "What makes you think I want to be looked at?" sign.

Speaking of not-quite-sane, I find this line from the Telegraph story... odd...:

It is ironic that the hospital seems to have used the Human Rights Act to justify an apparently rigid and unfeeling policy[...]

Why is the word "seems" in there? Was the reporter too lazy to call to find out the reason for the "no cooing" policy?

Overall I suspect the papers may be making WAY too much out of one statement from the hospital's Neonatal Manager, Debbie Lawson: "Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me"

Notice that she doesn't specify which particular right she's talking about. Let's see if the FULL quote (from the Halifax Courier link) sheds any light:

"We know people have good intentions and most people cannot resist cooing over new babies but we need to respect the child. 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."

Sounds slightly less nuts that way, doesn't it? I can understand being upset about people acting with inappropriate casualness toward a stranger's child.

Anyway, setting aside the one out-of-context quote you'll see everywhere, I honestly suspect that the reason for this rule MAY be related to the fact that the UK government has taken an increased interest in tracking hospital infection rates.

Whichever it is, I'm just a little disappointed in the lack of dilligence exhibited by the press on this one.

[Hat tip to bloggranddaughter ArmyWifeToddlerMom for the pointer to the BBC story]

Posted by: Harvey at 08:42 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 547 words, total size 4 kb.