>Yikes. We had to watch a video about the evils of baby shaking
>before leaving the hospital and sign a form saying that we'd taken
>it in.
>
>The video was on The Newborn Channel. You have to pay $5/day at
>Roosevelt to get regular cable TV, but The Newborn Channel is free.
>Some useful info (how to install the car seat [you have to have one
>to leave the hospital], how to breastfeed, etc.), but lots of
>product placement too. What a playground of product placement this
>is! Goodie bags on leaving the hospital, goodie bags on first visit
>to pediatrician. And the stuff ain't cheap.
I see things are getting worse. I remember when we left the hospital with one of my kids (second one as I recall) many years ago I first went through the baby capsule thing. First of all the nurse followed us down to the hospital exit, it felt weird, like she was reluctant to actually part with the baby. Then she asks us where the car is, but the car park was full and I'd had to park it right down the road about a kilometre away. She insisted on following us all the way back to the car, to check that we had installed a baby capsule!
It pissed me off, I can tell you. By that time it was already illegal to carry a baby in a car without an approved capsule, so of course we had hired one. It seemed almost too bizarre to take seriously, that maternity nurses would take it into their heads to start enforcing the road traffic laws. I wondered idly if she would be checking to see if the tread on my tyres was the regulation depth as well, or whether my brakes were sound. But no, apparently her official concerns were very specific.
This from a hospital where the doctor couldn't be bothered cutting short his golf game and turning up for the birth, they have the presumption to want to check up on parents.
A few weeks after our first child was born, a district nurse actually turned up at our door one morning completely unannounced. Obviously to check up on us. As if we didn't have enough to contend with from the baby's grandmothers. Now THAT'S what I call the Nanny State! These are some of the minor indignities of the life of the lumpenproletariat I figured.
Now compulsory instruction videos!
But what would happen if you refused to watch? I guess they would call in the welfare and snatch the kid. Probably refer you to a headshrinker to have you labelled schizophrenic.
The penalties of non-conformism are serious, don't get me started...
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas