When he was just hours old, my baby was taken from me. It took nearly a week of fighting the maternity hospital to get him back.
Of all the difficult decisions that come with pregnancy, choosing the hospital where I would deliver my son, Oliver, was easy. Pro Matre, Latin for “for mothers”, has a reputation as the best maternity hospital in South America. It’s where my grandmother gave birth, where my aunts and cousins were born, The 80-year-old hospital has been the cradle for some of Brazil’s richest families, and luckily, it was covered by our insurance. But had I known what I was giving up when I pulled up to the hospital 37 weeks pregnant and moaning in pain, I would have never walked in.
Public hospitals in Brazil are chronically understaffed and underfunded, with would-be patients coiling around the block in wait of scant beds. But private hospitals have the opposite problem. They rely on marble floors, top of the line equipment and bouquets of flowers to lure in wealthy patients. These luxuries are paid for by high occupancy rates, which in turn are fostered through conservative hospital protocols.
These prolonged hospital stays can have serious consequences for patients. Pro Matre’s protocols ensured that a healthy boy--against the repeated opposition of three independent doctors--spent the first five days of his life being punctured a dozen times for IVs and blood tests, fed formula instead of breastmilk, pumped with antibiotics and deprived of contact with his parents--all for no health benefit whatsoever.
With just a few weeks to go before my due date, my doctor ordered an emergency C-section when he discovered an infection in my uterus that he feared would spread to the baby.
Thankfully, Oliver’s wails echoed through the surgery room and confirmed what the pediatrician told us: he was a strong, healthy baby. Just a few hours later, however, a dip in his temperature sent him to the semi-intensive unit. That was the last time we would see him in our room.
His temperature soon stabilized, but against two private pediatrician’s recommendations, the hospital sent him to the ICU. They wanted to give him preventative antibiotics while they ran more tests to see if he had contracted the infection after all. We were heartbroken but disposed to do everything necessary for his health. I silenced my cries as they took him away.
Four days later, the tests results came back negative, confirming the independent pediatricians’ suspicion that Oliver had never caught the infection.
Relieved, we came to retrieve him, but the ICU decided to keep him longer due to a minor dip in his heart rate. Both of our independent pediatricians, shedding the diplomatic manner with which they had earlier disagreed with the ICU, said this was absurd and excessive. His heart rate was within normal, and variations are to be expected when a baby is monitored 24/7. The ICU doctor admitted this herself when an echocardiogram cleared him the next day. It was the equivalent of impounding a car for going five miles above the speed limit.
Even after the echocardiogram, the ICU refused to release him--this time due to, of all things, grandparents’ visitation day. They said they didn’t have time to transfer him to the semi-intensive unit, where hospital protocol required him to be observed for yet another 24 hours.
With my time at the hospital up, if I wanted to breastfeed, I’d have to sleep in the lobby or drive back and forth four times a night. I couldn’t leave my breastmilk in the hospital’s milk bank without further exams that took days to complete.
Meanwhile, Oliver’s little body was etched with marks from his existence at the ICU, where protocols designed for much sicker, premature babies clashed with his strength and energy. He couldn’t be clothed or swaddled, so he flailed himself awake and spent hours on end crying. His hands were bright purple from where he had repeatedly broken free from his IV. His face was raw with scratches from long fingernails we were not allowed to cut.
The nurses admonished my husband Ruddy, who went to the ICU once every three hours for the chance to hold him, against coddling our son as that made him even harder for the ICU to manage. One nurse laughed at our plan to breastfeed and when our pediatrician caught the staff secretly giving him formula, they told her Oliver was “too big” to be given breast milk. He was too energetic and active, they said. Almost like a perfectly healthy baby.
Failure to keep a healthy baby with his mother in the first days of life can have serious consequences, ranging from low milk production to delayed bonding and weight loss, according to Dr. Maria Albertina Rigo, the head of the neonatal department of the Brazilian Pediatrics Association. “These protocols that hold the patient in the ICU or even semi-intensive unit where the mother doesn’t have the ability to stay with the child, goes against all recommendations,” said Dr. Rigo.
Oliver was born in the 22 percentile for weight, but he quickly fell to the 0.7 percentile, which his pediatrician attributes to the consequences of the “fatal” week in the ICU on my milk production and breastfeeding.
While this over-hospitalization was painful for me and harmful to my baby, it was profitable for Pro Matre. A stay at the neonatal ICU can cost the insurance company up to $1000 a day in a private hospital in Sao Paulo.
As we packed our bags, the thought of Oliver alone in that hospital brought me to tears. Ruddy had enough.
“We’ll have to file a police report if you take him out,” said Dra Sandra, the head of the ICU, during a tense standoff when she refused to let us take Oliver. She called our behavior “frightening,” implying parental abuse or neglect, and said that the hospital would not give his vaccines and hearing exam unless we left him there another day, even though those exams could and should have been given on any of the five days he had already spent in the ICU.
With Ruddy’s insistence, she finally produced release forms, but forbid us from consulting a lawyer or insurance company. With no good options, we had to make our scariest decision as parents after only one week on the job. We were not leaving without our baby. We signed the papers and took him home.
I don’t wish what we went through that week on anyone, but unfortunately, situations like ours are common in Brazilian private hospitals.
Despite three independent medical opinions to the contrary, Pro Matre maintains it did the right thing. In a statement, the hospital said, “Pro Matre clarifies that it maintains rigid rules of conduct based on the best institutions around the world and that in Mrs. Marina Wang’s case all protocols were followed keeping in mind her newborn’s well being.” In other words, this is routine, for Oliver and for many other healthy babies to come.
