This week saw the publication of a report from the Care Quality Commision (CQC) which documents the ‘truly shocking’ birth experiences of many women.
One in four women was left alone during their labour or birth at a point when they were anxious or worried, according to the survey of women's experiences of NHS maternity care in England. "Feedback in the comments shows at times a truly shocking picture of experiences that should be the most joyous time in a woman's life, not the most frightening."
In a grim coincidence, I received a letter last week from the Chief Executive of the hospital in which I recently gave birth, responding to a formal complaint I made about my own treatment in the maternity department there.
At eight months pregnant, I suddenly began to haemorrhage badly, and was ambulanced to hospital. Everything happened so quickly that there was no time for my husband or mother, or even a friend, to get there. I was alone, frightened for my life and that of my unborn child, and desperate for reassurance from the midwife - but she was "too busy" to help me understand what was going on, and cross because my admission had "interrupted her lunch".
Immediately after my son was born by emergency C-section, limp and struggling to breathe, he was rushed to intensive care. My husband had arrived just in time for the birth; afterwards, though, we were left alone.
Somewhere in this vast, vast hospital was my tiny, helpless son, who desperately needed his mother - just as desperately as I needed him. Every instinct was telling me to get to my baby, but when the midwife returned I was told that I couldn’t visit him, until my "legs are back working". They wouldn’t take me.
On the postnatal ward, the nightmare continued. I vomited repeatedly in reaction to an antibiotic I was given, causing enormous pain to my still-fresh abdominal wound, but was refused adequate pain relief. I couldn’t get off the bed because I was in so much pain, but was shouted at for not leaving hospital quickly enough. I was desperate to stay with my son, who was still too sick to leave intensive care, and had I been discharged I wouldn’t have been able to manage to get back to the hospital to feed him. I was told this "wasn’t their concern".
With the utmost reluctance, they allowed me to stay one more night - "but after this, no matter what pain you're in, you're leaving". The following morning, the midwife answered the phone in my earshot and pointedly said, "We don’t have any beds right now, because we have some really selfish people here who are refusing to leave".
According to the letter I received from their Chief Executive last week, the midwives "were very upset to hear that this is your recollection of the communication". The letter is littered with phrases such as "We are sorry for your interpretation of events". The chief exec "would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your comments" - but clearly plans to do jack shit about them.
My son’s birth was traumatic - that’s nobody’s fault. But the way I was treated, at a moment when I was terribly afraid and desperate for reassurance, made things infinitely worse; it turned a difficult start to his life into a horrific one. I’m angry that I went through that, and I’m angry that I’ve now been disbelieved. I remember every detail with absolute clarity - though I wish that wasn’t the case.
Why are so many women having such dreadful birth experiences? Four in 10 of the 23,000 women polled by the CQC were unhappy with the quality of care they received. While standards of care in other branches of medicine seem generally to be improving, maternity care appears to be going backwards: the number of women who report being left alone and worried has actually increased since the watchdog last investigated the issue in 2010. Women’s concerns about the treatment they receive during birth are routinely pushed to one side: one in five women felt their worries during labour and birth were not taken seriously.
Birth can and should be a joyous experience - but for too many women, it simply isn’t. Sorry to point out the bleeding obvious, but birth is a uniquely female experience: men can't do it. If they could, though, I suspect the quality of maternity care in this country would improve pretty damn quickly.
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Why are so many women having bad birth experiences?
MumsnetGuestBlogs · 20/12/2013 15:00
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