Hospital allows grandparents to visit newborns

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Hospital allows grandparents to visit newborns
Hillsdale Hospital is now allowing two healthy grandparents to visit laboring mothers and newborn babies. Maggie Hroncich | Collegian

Hillsdale Hospital is now allowing two healthy grandparents to visit laboring mothers and newborn babies as of Feb. 25.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, visitors to the birthing center were restricted to one adult support person throughout the duration of the laboring mother’s stay for most of 2020, according to a press release. 

As the number of coronavirus cases has dropped and remained low through the beginning of 2021, the hospital decided it could now allow “extra visitation without creating any significant risk for our patients or our caregivers,” according to Rachel Lott, director of marketing and development.

Lott said the visiting restrictions were relaxed last June when cases decreased, but stricter guidelines were reinstituted in November when cases increased again.

“There was a point in the pandemic where we did open up again to allow two healthy grandparents along with the designated support person for the laboring mother,” Lott said. “Then we went back to only allowing the support person when the numbers got really high in the fall, but we’ve seen those numbers drop again significantly.” 

She said the decision to limit visitors was never an easy balancing act for hospital administrators.

“We know the importance of folks having their family members with them for their health care, and particularly in the birthing center because it’s such a major milestone in someone’s life to bring a new child into the world,” Lott said. “Now that we believe that we can do that safely. We always have to balance the safety and the risks related to visitation with the importance of that for the patient and their family, so we’ve had to make some difficult decisions over the course of the pandemic related to that, but we are thrilled that we are able to do this again and to open that backup.”