Male NICU nurses?

[WantsALittle1]

I mean *no* offense by this, so please no replies putting me on blast! Just putting it out there to see if I'm alone in this feeling.

I am uncomfortable with my daughter having a male NICU nurse and I feel really awful, but I think I'm going to request only female nurses from here on out. Does anyone else feel this way?

I am all for workplace gender equality, and yes, I realize that there could be sickos of any gender. I just feel like the odds are better with my daughter in the care of a woman and, to me, a female NICU nurse is like a substitute mother. It feels very natural, and while I don't like all the female nurses she's had, I do generally feel more comfortable with the idea of her being cared for by women. Also, I really don't feel comfortable BFing or having my boobs out in the open around a guy! I have a male OB/GYN, and would trust him with my life. I absolutely adore him and wouldn't/couldn't replace him! There's something different about a male caretaker in the NICU setting because of all the intimate (BFing, cuddling, diaper-changing) moments I'm trying to share with my daughter. It just feels weird to me to have a dude looming at her bedside when I'm BFing. I don't feel the same weirdness when it's a woman...

 

[AP]

Tbh Hun I am not sure many would agree with you. I would say the best NICU we had was a male, he was by far the most fabulous nurse we met there. (some members here know who I am talking about would no doubt agree) I used to walk in and he'd be singing songs to the babies, making the neonatal journey less clinical as such an trying to re-create the norm. None of the female nurses did that. None

I did feel a little worried about the bfing but with practice and confidence I did express and bf in front of him. He's seen that kind of thing all his career, it's not even an issue??

 

[dizz]

To be honest - with the bad treatment we had through the NICU and transitional care system - I'd have preferred to deal with males a lot of the time... we had lots of examples of the worst of female behaviour (it was like being back in my all-girl convent school again) snidey digs, bitchiness, vindictiveness (this was more when I was in labour though). It was the male doctors and male staff who were straightforward with us and honest - even to the point of saying, "yes, this bit's crap - but after this, comes X Y and Z" and I preferred that to people trying to empathise and not giving me a straight answer.

The intimate care bit doesn't bother me, the breastfeeding and expressing angle didn't bother me - I hit the point where I was sat there with the pump on no matter who was in the room... to any nurse a patient is a patient is a patient - and it's hardly as if NICU is ever going to be an environment where there's one staff member only around - the places are like Clapham Junction even at the quietest times!

And having seen the attitude of many of the staff (I've said before our experience was very much a bad 'un though) - substitute mother ain't in the vocabulary of many who work there at the best of times!

 

[Ozzieshunni]

When Alex was in the NICU, the worse midwives I dealt with were female. The males tended to be very helpful. In fact, I prefer male doctors to female ones. I think you need to look at the level of care your child is receiving and not the gender of the person giving the care

 

[dizz]

When Alex was in the NICU, the worse midwives I dealt with were female. The males tended to be very helpful. In fact, I prefer male doctors to female ones. I think you need to look at the level of care your child is receiving and not the gender of the person giving the care

Oh god particularly the one who looked like a young Richard Gere...

 

[Ozzieshunni]

When Alex was in the NICU, the worse midwives I dealt with were female. The males tended to be very helpful. In fact, I prefer male doctors to female ones. I think you need to look at the level of care your child is receiving and not the gender of the person giving the care

Oh god particularly the one who looked like a young Richard Gere...

My distaste for female medical professionals comes from one telling me I was too fat to get pregnant and another telling me I shouldn't hold my child so much

 

[WantsALittle1]

OP here, thanks for all the earnest replies. It really doesn't help that I haven't had a male nurse at our NICU that I've clicked with... This is odd for me! Most of my friends are guys. In fact, my two best friends are guys. I really don't have a lot of female friends or female persons of importance in my life, and it's always been that way. I've had weird feelings about 2/4 male nurses that my daughter has been assigned, and I assumed yesterday that this meant that, deep down, I had a problem with male caretakers looking after my daughter. I assumed this because I have NOT had problems with 50% of the female nurses to whom she's been assigned. Looking at it now, I don't think it's the fact that they are male. I think I honestly just don't click with half of the male nurses in our NICU and it's probably just a coincidence.

I don't have a problem with male medical professionals--my OB is a man, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

 

[Agiboma]

TBH im with you OP i prefferd the femals and so did my son, he always did better with them. Once a male aws looking after him he would alsways pull out his tubes more frequently and just misbehave. I do think in terms of nuturing, bf'ing i was way more comforteble with females.

 

[jbolady]

I felt a little uncomfortable with the Male Nurse taking care of my daughter as well. I'm not sure why but I did. I'd cringe when I'd know he was the nurse on duty, especially if I was unable to visit that day.

 

[Liesje]

I personally would not have a problem with it but I guess it's all down to one's past experiences.
If it makes you uncomfortable, just tell them due to personal reasons, you'd rather have female only caretakers. They're there to care for you as well as your baby and you have enough to worry about.
With that said, in my experience with my baby, the male nurses were always the most gentle and caring. My baby had to have a lot of blood taken and he always seemed way more comfortable in the male nurses' "big strong hands"... I guess they feel more secure with them? with the females he was always flopping around and crying.

 

[dizz]

There's ONE transitional support worker that, should I end up in the situation again (I intend to fight all possible transfers to the hospital in question if we end up with another preemie though) that I'll adamantly refuse to have any involvement with the treatment of my baby.

She's female, she's utterly rude, callous and uncaring (and a little birdie told me - with a string of complaints about her attitude). She's the only one - and she will NOT touch any child of mine again... no doubt should the situation arise - the hospital will tell me I have no rights to restrict who nurses my child and call social services on me though.

 

[Srrme]

In all honesty, I preferred the male NICU nurses over the females! Majority of the female nurses were rough with my baby, but the male nurses were not -- they were very, very gentle, soft spoken, etc. My baby was rarely assigned a male nurse though, because they normally put them on their most critical babies.

 

[Srrme]

There's ONE transitional support worker that, should I end up in the situation again (I intend to fight all possible transfers to the hospital in question if we end up with another preemie though) that I'll adamantly refuse to have any involvement with the treatment of my baby.

She's female, she's utterly rude, callous and uncaring (and a little birdie told me - with a string of complaints about her attitude). She's the only one - and she will NOT touch any child of mine again... no doubt should the situation arise - the hospital will tell me I have no rights to restrict who nurses my child and call social services on me though.

That's crazy! We had a few nurses like that, and we complained about them immediately. Needless to say, they were no assigned to our baby any more!

 

[WantsALittle1]

There's ONE transitional support worker that, should I end up in the situation again (I intend to fight all possible transfers to the hospital in question if we end up with another preemie though) that I'll adamantly refuse to have any involvement with the treatment of my baby.

She's female, she's utterly rude, callous and uncaring (and a little birdie told me - with a string of complaints about her attitude). She's the only one - and she will NOT touch any child of mine again... no doubt should the situation arise - the hospital will tell me I have no rights to restrict who nurses my child and call social services on me though.

They can really do that! As far as I understand, it's the hospital's job to do everything in their power to accommodate the parents' requests, and that *includes* preferences in nursing/care staff. Have you complained about her to the charge nurse?

 

[WantsALittle1]

In all honesty, I preferred the male NICU nurses over the females! Majority of the female nurses were rough with my baby, but the male nurses were not -- they were very, very gentle, soft spoken, etc. My baby was rarely assigned a male nurse though, because they normally put them on their most critical babies.

See, in my case it was the opposite. The first male nurse we had handled my daughter in a way that made both my husband and I *very* uncomfortable. He was careless in his handling and was ignoring her feedback about the way she was being held. The guy was generally sweet and well-intentioned, and I know he's not the only one who feels this way about babies (i.e that most people coddle them too much), but sometimes I think that having decades of nursing experience makes nurses (male and female) think they know it all.

My daughter was doing all kinds of distress signaling--arms flailing, back arching, head jutting forward, and he was just ignoring it, turned around talking to me while flopping her around like a chicken on a spit, with no neck or back support. SO angry was I...

TBH, it was probably this single experience that made me feel uneasy with the male NICU nurses. I don't know why, but when something negative happens we tend to latch onto novel contextual cues (I've never had a male nurse before) that co-occurred with the experience but had nothing to do with the actual bad part. This guy was sort of an ambassador for male NICU nurses as far as I'm concerned, and the first impression was not a good one.

 

[dizz]

There's ONE transitional support worker that, should I end up in the situation again (I intend to fight all possible transfers to the hospital in question if we end up with another preemie though) that I'll adamantly refuse to have any involvement with the treatment of my baby.

She's female, she's utterly rude, callous and uncaring (and a little birdie told me - with a string of complaints about her attitude). She's the only one - and she will NOT touch any child of mine again... no doubt should the situation arise - the hospital will tell me I have no rights to restrict who nurses my child and call social services on me though.

They can really do that! As far as I understand, it's the hospital's job to do everything in their power to accommodate the parents' requests, and that *includes* preferences in nursing/care staff. Have you complained about her to the charge nurse?

We're long-since out of there now thank God, but I'm pregnant again and despite having in big bold letters all over my current maternity notes "DO NOT TRANSFER TO X HOSPITAL" (thankfully there are two in my city) - if I end up with another preemie and it's anything but the most straightforward of cases - they're likely to try to send us back there (with me clinging to all the furniture in protest like a toddler tantrum on the way out of the door no doubt!)

Seriously that woman left a tube fed baby I couldn't get an aspirate off to check the tube before feeding her so buzzed for help crying with hunger while she finished reading Heat magazine, then wandered up and said "I'm not going to help you."

 

[Liesje]

How can they call social services on you for requesting another nurse?

 

[Dinah93]

I really don't think gender makes a difference to care, you can have unpleasant personalities of both genders. There were no male nicu nuses on our unit, out of 48 staff, but every doctor was male and they were fantastic handling and engaging with our LO. It does make me sad that a few people have said they don't trust male nurses, my husband is currently applying to go back to uni to do a second degree in pediatric nursing - he's always been great with children - and it does upset me that there could be the assumption that a man nursing has such a high risk of their being an ulterior motive. Of course you read about patients, young and old, being mistreated, but I have to believe this is the exception rather than a commonplace incident otherwise every hospital would have every child's room on cctv to monitor the staff and parents would be there 24/7.

 

[toothfairyx]

I didn't come across any male nurses but my OH commented how uncomfortable some of the female nurses made him feel, like unwelcome, ignored and irrelevant in one of the hospitals.

 

[WantsALittle1]

I didn't come across any male nurses but my OH commented how uncomfortable some of the female nurses made him feel, like unwelcome, ignored and irrelevant in one of the hospitals.

OP here--we had this experience too. A lot of them were very patronizing to my husband.