SO I’M SETTLING back home after a two-week stint away that cost €1,000 per night. Fancy shmancy… Or not.

This €1,000 per night room charge didn’t include my breakfast and I had to sleep in a chair for the first five nights, and then on a postage stamp-sized mattress on the floor.

The shower didn’t have any toiletries and I had to provide my own towels.

Tessa, my one-year-old, was with me. She was treated to lumpy Weetabix or Readybrek for breakfast, along with a couple of slices of white toast.

Lunch was usually pureed vegetables of varying shades of yellow and orange – I never quite figured out what they were – along with gravy infused mince and mashed potatoes. Every day. For two weeks.

In the evenings, we could chase someone down for a bit of reheated scrambled egg and we once managed to score some fish fingers.

So for €1,000 per night you’d think I’d be screaming for a refund, yes? What kind of accommodation provider could bill €14,000 and provide such basic facilities? An Irish hospital, that’s who.

‘The least that should be on offer is proper nourishment’

Don’t get me wrong. Not for one second am I complaining about the excellent healthcare that my baby received during her stint in Cork University Hospital.

The staff there were excellent. Professional, warm, attentive – everything I could want when trusting people with the wellbeing of my child.

They always went that extra mile with her and always tried to make her smile. But €14,000 for the room – before the consultant’s fees, ultrasounds, bloods, surgery and whatever else will be totted up?

To me, it’s crazy. I know it’s the insurance company that will be stumping up the cost, and if we had been public patients we’d have been limited to €75 per night for up to 10 nights. But that’s not the point.

If a hospital is benefiting to the tune of €14,000 from our stay, I think the least that should be on offer is proper nourishment for the patients and some basic facilities for parents.

After all, if I had decided to go home and leave Tessa alone overnight, they’d have to invest a lot more resources in her care. She was constantly trying to climb out of her cot, for example. And I spent most of my days doing laps around the ward with her.

At 16 months old, she can’t exactly take care of herself, and unlike some of the tiny babies in there who were not doing much more than eating and sleeping, despite her illness, she was looking for constant entertainment and interaction.

So my presence there was necessary, unless of course they wanted to dedicate a nurse or carer to her around the clock.

‘I survived on Tesco ready meals’

Another point was the lack of food for me. Tessa didn’t eat much at all during her stay.

I’m not sure if it was the illness, the high dose of anti biotics or the quality of food that put her off. I’d hazard a guess that it was a combination of all three.

All she wanted to do was drink milk. I breastfeed her so she pretty much reverted back to being a newborn – feeding around the clock, clinging to me as her main source of nourishment and comfort.

I was delighted to be able to do it – I never once had to worry about dehydration or her going hungry and having her close to me meant I knew when she was spiking a temperature.

I was an instant source of comfort after yet another blood test or canula insertion. I certainly burned up a lot of energy though, and given that I wasn’t provided with any meals, I spent a lot of my time in there feeling hungry – especially in the first few days before I had managed to organise myself and buy some provisions.

We live an hour away from the hospital and my husband was at home with the other kids, so I didn’t have anyone else to mind Tessa while I went off for something to eat.

There is a lovely parents’ room on the ward – it has tea and coffee, a water cooler and a fridge, along with a comfy couch. The trouble is, I wasn’t allowed to bring Tessa in there, and I wasn’t allowed to bring cups of tea into the room we were staying in.

So it wasn’t exactly practical in that sense. And given that I was my daughter’s main source of nourishment during our stay, a sandwich here and there, or even one of the god-awful hospital dinners, would have been really appreciated.

I survived on Tesco ready meals snaffled when Tessa went to sleep for the night, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

‘Our babies shouldn’t be deprived of fresh and nutritious food’

So as we settle back in home and relish in the luxury of things like fresh fruit and vegetables, fish that doesn’t come in a rubbery yellow coating, and bread that isn’t in the form of cold and soggy toast, I realise what a massive shakeup our hospitals need.

The nurses shouldn’t have to chase down kitchen staff to send up food for our babies who are in there recovering. Our babies shouldn’t be deprived of fresh and nutritious food while they’re at their weakest and most vulnerable.

I shudder to think what the catering bills for CUH are, given the lack of proper and nutritious grub. But the €14,000 that our insurance company will end up paying for our accommodation would buy a lot of grapes, strawberries, oranges, rice cakes, bread sticks and other healthy snacks, plus dinners that don’t consist of congealed gloop covered in salty gravy.

That €14,000 would be more than cover our rent for a year. Or if we were really splashing out, it’d provide 50 nights in the Grand Suite of the 5 star Castlemartyr Resort in Cork – including breakfast and 25 dinners. Now that’s some food for thought.

Aine Bonner is a freelance media professional, blogger and mum of three. 

Read: The furore around fatty, inedible hospital food overshadows a far more serious issue>