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Wheeling Hospital Unveils Nursery, ‘Rooming In’ Model

Photo Provided Jordan and Matthew Scherich of West Finley, Pennsylvania, enjoy the comfort of rooming-in with their daughter Violet at Wheeling Hospital. The hospital has gone to the rooming-in model, which puts baby with mother at least 23 hours each day.

With the opening of Wheeling Hospital’s new nursery, the hospital also is using a new rooming-in arrangement for newborns and their mothers.

“Rooming in” keeps mother and baby in the same room throughout the entire hospital stay, said RN Lynette Debertrand, nurse manager of Pediatrics, Nursery and NICU. It helps parents learn about infant care as well as the baby’s behaviors, with nursing staff working with them day and night.

“The goal is to have the baby stay with the mom at least 23 hours a day, which is a CDC recommendation and supported by the Joint Commission,” Debertrand said. “This is a perfect time to get to know and connect with the new baby as babies recognize their parent’s voice, smell, and heartbeat, which helps them relax.”

Research shows that mothers get the same amount of rest with their babies in the room as they do if those babies go to the nursery for the night. Debertrand said moms are more relaxed with their babies beside them and they tend to establish routines much sooner.

Additional evidence shows that 24-hour rooming-in provides moms benefits like better sleep, more confidence in caring for their baby, less infant crying and distress, more skin-to-skin contact and less chance of postpartum depression.

Benefits for babies include earlier development of a more regular sleep cycle, more stable body temperatures and blood sugar, less crying and lower levels of stress hormones.

With the change to the rooming-in model, Wheeling Hospital’s new nursery is state of the art, but a much smaller version. It is designed for three babies as the other babies will be in the rooms with their mothers. Physicians are rounding and doing admission and discharge exams in the mothers’ rooms, and the nurses are doing all care at the mother’s bedside.

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