TVScope: Baby onBoard ,Thursday, May 31st, RTÉ1
Baby on Board is the new parenting television series by Sideline for RTÉ. It began with the issue of premature babies.
This was an excellent programme and an important topic with which to launch the series.
For if having one's first child is life-altering for most couples, when a baby arrives prematurely the adjustments, anxieties, uncertainties, fatigue and rollercoaster of happiness, elation and despair are intensified.
At least 600 parents annually have to manage the fear, hopes and sheer hard work that prematurity involves, the sadness of not being able initially to hold their child and bring their baby home, the worry that the baby might not survive and the pressure of daily hospital visits through traffic, parking, clamping and stress.
Having a premature baby is truly an experience one cannot appreciate unless one lives through it and this programme gave good insight into the reality of that experience.
The programme followed Mary and John Daly and their beautiful daughter Amelia guided by the presenter of the series, Doreen Buckley, a qualified midwife with 30 years' professional experience who informed, encouraged, supported and assisted them through the early months of Amelia's life when, in Mary Daly's words, "life became the hospital". When Amelia was finally allowed home there were endless visits for eyes, ears, orthopaedic and plastic surgery checks.
They were lucky to have Doreen to assure them, to remind them to make some time for themselves and even to look after Amelia for them for one precious night away together, because it can be too frightening for everyone in the early days to leave a baby born prematurely with anyone other than a qualified nurse.
Parents today are often isolated from extended family, the wisdom of their mothers, grandmothers and others who, in former times, helped them to understand small babies and taught them the skills of parenthood.
Now many parents are isolated and alone struggling in one of life's most important tasks with a baby who might be the first baby they have ever held. How is any parent to become proficient overnight in how to wash, feed, dress and protect a new baby?
Programmes dealing with parenting issues are often criticised on two counts. The first is that they turn natural maternal and paternal intuition into a commodity, which undermines parents and makes them believe they are incompetent to parent without professional advice.
The second objection, which is valid in relation to programmes about family problems, is the ethical issue of exposing vulnerable families and children to public scrutiny to which children are certainly not in a position to give informed consent and which they may resent or be upset by in school or in later life.
But this programme broke neither of those caveats. It was educational but not exploitative for the programme simply accompanied this couple at a crucial time in their lives, the arrival and the survival of their daughter Amelia and the united manner in which her parents coped.
It also showed the exquisite expertise of the nursing profession in Doreen Buckley and the importance of this support for parents.