Table 1 Information provided to mothers at discharge

Keeping the baby warm

“They just told me if your child has reached 1.8, you go home. And you buy that medication. If you don't have, you can't go home. And then I bought it. And then we went, they explained to us. If you see the child is too hot, you bring them to the hospital. If they are too cold, you bring them to the hospital. If they are crying a lot, you bring them to the hospital. Yes, that was what they told us”. HF1_002

Hygiene and feeding

“He told me first it was cleanliness. Second, the doctor told me not to leave the baby to suckle on their own because they don't have enough strength to suckle and get filled. Sometimes they will be suckling and sleep and think they are full but they are just tired. If they suckle too much, they get exhausted. So, they told me to go look for a cup for a baby. When the time reaches, I express and give it to them. The next round I breastfeed them, if I stay for a little while I express for them and make sure they are clean and where they are staying is clean, including the cup you are milking for them”. HF1_003

“Most of the counselling was being done in the morning, that morning, the way to breastfeed your child, you see now you’ve left, you are not feeding the child using a tube, and remember, he is small, and he hasn’t known how to suck the milk by himself, but now he has attained the kilos of sucking milk, so you feed as often as possible. If it is, you feed many times, many times [baby mumbling] many times, so that he may also grow. That feeding also helps, and then you are also told, issues concerning drinking water. After being released, that is the discharge now, you don’t need to be told much, they will repeat. But you already know, because you’ve stayed there for over ten days, and the topic is one, or two, mother’s health, child health, every day, you can only be a joker if you don’t”. HF1_004

Follow up visits and kangaroo mother care

“… but you are told, “kindly remember to attend the clinics”, two weeks has found us here, so you will not go the two weeks one, you will stay and come back… you will go the other clinic and it is okay and make sure you attend clinics”. HF1_004

“We were told to keep the baby well and keep her warm. To Kangaroo the babies and breastfeed them well… They were also to be exposed under sun, things like those. [baby crying] and to give the supplements that they had prescribed”. HF1_009

“Yeah, they explained to us on how to handle to the baby well at home. Especially insisting that we go on with kangaroo mother care. They told us, it’s not like we’ve been discharged from the hospital to go home and stay a normal life. You have to give your baby time, until they get to those kgs and kangaroo mother care, helps the baby in gaining weight fast. So, it was your hard work, the more you do it the better and the easier it will be for you”. HF2_001

Danger signs

“They said, in case the baby is not suckling, they will turn pale or yellowish, you are supposed to return to the hospital, to take him under sunlight, and follow up on immunization”. HF1_005

“Like if the baby has refused to breastfeed, because they are not eating any other food, they must breastfeed. If I see like they have started to change, instead of being pink, they start becoming white, they do not have blood, I should take them back, if they have started being yellow, if the eyes, if I look at the eyes and see that it is like I don’t know how they look like, like these palms, they are whitish or yellow. The other one was if the baby refused to breastfeed, or they are crying or they have fever”. HF2_008

“Yeah, we were told if there is anything abnormal, like if a baby convulses, if the fever is too high or the temperature drop very low. For pre-terms, their temperatures drop mostly, if the temperatures drop very low, we should go back to the hospital, or if they go so high and the baby convulses, we should go back to the hospital”. HF2_002

“Yeah, we were told if we see that the baby has fever, fever, we should take the baby back to the hospital, or diarrhea, and vomiting, we should take the baby back to the hospital”. HF2_004