Why hospitals started displaying newborn babies through windows

The second episode of Hulu's new Handmaid's Tale "Offred" (Elisabeth Moss) starts 16 minutes in. She has just given birth to her first child and follows a nurse to the newborn nursery of the hospital. The first bath will be taken there. Arriving at the nursery, Offred is startled by an unusual sight. RELATED CONTENT One of the world's most famous hospitals was originally a makeshift tornado relief clinic

"Where are the kids?" she asked.

"Oh, we had a rough one." night. Two people went to intensive care and the others died.

The camera zooms in as she looks through a huge window into a newborn nursery with three rows of empty bassinets. Ominous music plays in the background. The scene bodes ill for a community struggling with widespread infertility. As the creative team behind The Handmaiden understands, an empty nursery is unsettling. Viewers of all ages and life experiences can easily recognize the importance of the nursery without infants, illustrating the special role the nursery window plays in modern American hospitals.

Neonatal nurseries became a fixture in American hospitals in the early 20th century, serving as the preferred and default place for birth during the transition from home to hospital. As hospitals built new maternity wards to house women during labor, delivery, and recovery, they also built separate nurseries where newborns were cared for collectively, in addition to their mothers.

These nurseries all have one striking similarity: their distinguishing feature is the large window facing the hospital corridor. The windows showcase the hospital's youngest patients to family, friends, hospital staff and the general public. The 1943 edition of the Standards and Restatement of Nursing in Neonatal Hospitals, first published as a collaboration between the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Bureau, states that "a viewing window shall be provided between each nursery and nurse's station and between each nursery and hallway to facilitate Relatives may view the infants without touching them. Photo of infants admitted to a Houston-area hospital circa 1960 (John P. McGovern Houston Medical College Historical Collection and Research). Center - Texas Medical Center Library, Houston; Houston, TX) The illustrated purpose of the "KDSP" viewing window is twofold: first, the window allows relatives to "see the baby," and second, the window serves as a The role of barriers to prevent contact between relatives and newborns must be seen. However, although hospitals view the construction of these windows as hygienic barriers between newborns and the general hospital community, preventing infection is unlikely to be the main motivation. . There would be no reason for hospitals to install windows in the first place if they functioned primarily as antimicrobial barriers; building standard windowless walls around nurseries would be less troublesome and would potentially eliminate nurseries and hallways through cracks between windows and walls barrier between them. The ubiquitous nursery window thus served a major social function

The roots may lie in the traditional nursery display in Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which prevented premature birth and other infirmities. The babies were put on display in permanent exhibitions and traveling exhibits. In the United States, incubators were shown with admission fees, and sick babies were exhibited in "ethnic villages and freak shows," most notably at Coney Island in New York. >

Of course, unlike incubator displays, neonatal nurseries are places that provide clinical care rather than entertainment and are widely accepted and recognized by mainstream medical institutions. Most importantly, the babies displayed in neonatal nursery windows are almost always healthy. y. The core of these windows is to show happy, healthy and hopeful normalcy.

While large screen windows often show swaddled newborns to everyone passing through the hospital corridors, some nurseries are used throughout the day. There are specific times set aside for family and friends to take a closer look at a specific baby. During these more intimate observations, nurses will often hold the newborn up to a window so eager observers can get a closer look.

In this case, the admirer may be the mother, a grandparent, an extended family member, or an adoptive parent, but most often it seems to be the father. For much of the 20th century, fathers did not see their children in person until they brought them home, and hospitals appear to have fathers' wishes in mind when designing nursery windows. A 1950 article in the American Journal of Nursing reported on a California hospital’s installation of an innovative recessed nursery window they called a “baby display,” which “paid off in public relations value, Making new fathers happier..."

The image of a father meeting his newborn through glass also appeared in countless family photos from the mid-twentieth century, immortalizing the image in everything from art to advertising. The Prudential Insurance Company of America ran a full-page ad in a 1943 issue of Life magazine, using the classic nursery-window interaction between father, nurse and baby to persuade new fathers to buy life insurance. Insurance. The page featured a large photo of a handsome young man in a suit and tie, smiling through a glass window into the eyes of his newborn child. The baby is in the arms of a nurse, who is holding the baby and pushing the child toward its father. The caption of the photo reads "Photo of a man looking into the future" and beneath the banner it reads: "Rows of tiny cradles - and a nurse holding a new baby, baby! But daddy sees more than just one Newborn son. He sees a long future stretching ahead... Photo taken in 1969 in a reinforced glass nursery window at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Archives and Records Center) "KDSP" Today, Newborn. Nurseries are no longer considered a best practice in U.S. hospitals, and their use is disappearing, in part due to the widespread adoption of the World Health Organization's 1991 Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, a global program to promote breastfeeding. Hospital Practices, Including Maintaining Healthy Mother-Infant Pairing As nurseries began to close, popular media reports and professional discussions reinforced the idea of ??the nursery window as a positive space in the hospital, both for the infant's family and for unrelated members of the community.

In 2002, the American Journal of Maternal and Child Nursing published a debate on closing nursery windows. Dottie James, Ph.D., RN, advocated keeping windows open, in part because "family, friends and Others...seeing one of these little miracles, smiles and bees becomes the highlight of the day. "In some hospitals, the nursery window serves as a destination for patients and families from elsewhere in the hospital who are experiencing a health crisis," James also noted. "Standing outside the nursery and seeing those babies who are dying can give those who are trying to cope with the crisis." Home brings hope.

Also in 2002, a Los Angeles Times article echoed James's sentiments, lamenting that "popular viewing areas are closed, and those that are the most popular in life are closed." Hospital visitors overwhelmed by dark times can brighten their day just by peeking through the nursery window. ” In the same article, Michael Baskt, executive director of Community Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles, shared, “…for those who are not doing well, we know they are attracted to the beauty of birth. Sometimes people need to move from the sad, depressing side of the hospital to the happy side. Baby s puts things into perspective.

As influential thinkers and organizations continue to reimagine the postpartum period as a leapfrog beginning for breastfeeding, clinically managed bonding, and developing the “right” parenting habits that mark the birth of a newborn The display continues. For better or worse, the tradition of the nursery window seems to be alive and well here, whether as a published "online nursery" in a hospital or as the backdrop for emotional scenes in television and film.

This story was originally published on NursingClio, a collaborative blogging project that connects historical scholarship with today’s issues related to gender and medicine