It is with an energetic and positive spirit that nurses Isabel Roberto and Paula Santos, from the Community Care Unit (UCC) Faro, from the Central Group of Health Centers (ACES), who have been visiting couples at home for five years, in the first 24 hours after they became parents and were discharged from the hospital. The goal: to prevent illnesses and build skills for mothers and fathers.
Little Laura, five days old, is sleeping when the team made up of these two nurses enters her parents' house, to guide mother and father during their daughter's first days of life in terms of breastfeeding, child hygiene, how to make the child comfortable and all kinds of doubts that might arise now that the family has grown larger.
It is the third visit to this couple and the results of the intervention and the advice given by the health professionals are already visible. The baby eats well and sleeps peacefully.
Nurse Paula Santos takes the opportunity to teach her mother how to cut her daughter's nails while she is still resting. Now awake, the baby is weighed by nurse Isabel Roberto, who notes that the child has gained another 65 grams since the day before, something that makes the parents visibly happy, because it shows that they are "doing everything well", following the instructions they received . They share the tasks and, while mother Ana launches a boat, father João dresses his daughter.
It was through a friend, and the good experience she had with the UCC team Faro, that this couple got to know this project and the possibility of receiving the professionals at home, to do the heel prick test and weigh the child, also getting information about breastfeeding.
«We saw that her son slept very well, he was a very calm baby in relation to other babies of our friends, who did not have this support», says Ana, while breastfeeding her daughter.
«They give us very specific tips, how to make Laura turn her head more to the right or more to the left. And when I forget, her father reminds me how to do it. This support is extremely helpful. The most important thing for me are breastfeeding tips, how to avoid lumps and make Laura get the most out of it», she says.
«They do a spectacular job in giving guidance to those who, like me, have never been very good at very small babies», confesses João.
“I feel like I don't do anything with confidence, until someone tells me how to do it, then it'll go well. Receiving the team here at home has been a great help”, adds the young father.
The parental intervention project, which aims to improve the rate of breastfeeding and which has already entered the homes of hundreds of users, arose out of the need to bring primary health care closer to users and improve accessibility to services.
The nurses, who work exclusively with interventions in this area, cover a large part of pregnant users in Faro, being that whoever belongs to a Family Health Unit in the city can be referred to receive visits at home, in case of need.
«We found very diverse mothers, from those referred by the hospital, to risky situations. This is the biggest challenge, because all the discovery of skills and their improvement, can include the pathology factor, housing conditions, economic conditions, negligence. We coordinate the work with all the necessary entities and professionals from other areas», says Isabel Roberto.
«We are the link between the community and the institution», explains Paula Santos. "We can obtain a truly real and complete image of the family, regarding the difficulties it has, the way of being, how the family dynamic works." They report that "it takes a lot of imagination" to solve the situations they face on a daily basis and that they have to "use all the resources", especially in cases where communication in Portuguese becomes impossible because the mother is of another nationality and does not understand the language.
“Sometimes we do the translation through the help of a third person to explain such basic things as going to the pharmacy to buy an ointment and how to use it,” explains Isabel Roberto.
“We are constantly working on health and prevention. Transforming a baby into a calm baby makes parents feel calm and not so easily resort to Health Centers unnecessarily, because they know how to respond to their baby», he emphasizes.
«It is not a routine project», says Paula Santos. «The only routine we have is to leave the service. From there it is always a surprise, every day. But it's very rewarding and it's a project that bets on quality and positive parenting».
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