To be deflated by the total indifference to harm being normalised on maternity wards

Exact same situation with me.

Let me dream, but I think Wes Streeting does have this courage. The NHS needs fundamental change.

For me, because you only find out about it once pregnant and then have a relatively short time of not that much contact to see issues before abruptly you are very distracted and preoccupied with a new baby...and then by a toddler etc, as the experience starts to fade a bit.

So sorry, I did misunderstand. I think I was expecting everyone to disagree with me

What? No, I mean I can well believe that a lot of the difficulties come from babies head size versus the size of the birth canal/our body's capabilities because I struggled to expel DS naturally even though he was small. I thought it was fairly clear that I was agreeing with you...

I don't think anyone suggested they were done for fun or even complained about them.

Most of the complaints here focus around inadequate pain relief, poor basic care, zero compassion, non existent post natal service, being ignored or accused of lying...

No wonder there are so many posters suffering from ptsd, needing therapy etc.

I may not have explained it well. Human babies heads, even small ones, are still large to pass out of the birth canal, compared to other species and have to do lots of turning. They are more likely to need help and they are more likely to not fit right. It's just not true that birthing humans is easy because it's 'natural'

Sorry I don't understand. Do you mean you can believe you needed an episiotomy with a small headed child?

DS's head was really small (he was 5lbish) and I still needed an episiotomy so I can well believe it.

Human birth is particularly difficult because of how large babies heads are, compared to every other species. And they are getting bigger. I don't like this belief that it's normal and so natural and so should be risk free. It's really not like that. Noone is using forceps or episiotomies for fun. It's cos your baby is unfortunately stuck, and you'll both die without intervention.

I think there’s also an expectation that women should just get on with it, and birth injuries should just be accepted.

If men were left incontinent and injured after a normal life event, there might be a different take on such things.

I complained to PALS after both of my births, and had a lengthy conversation with a senior midwife both times. Three years apart in the same hospital and a lot of the same issues were there.

There has been more coverage of it recently though - the Times I think first calculated that the NHS spends more on medical negligence cases connected to birth than it does on maternity care and covered that at length. There was the Parliamentary report on birth trauma led by Theo Clarke (whose speech on her personal experience I really recommend reading/watching - at one point she's really struggling to hold it together and Andrea Leadsom intervenes to give her time to collect herself enough to carry on).

But like you I am so frustrated: how many of these reports will it take for the system to change?

Ha! It doesn't treat the after effects. Over the course of many years nagging and waiting, you might get somewhere but I bet most give up

Exactly. It makes no sense to cause women such harm (physically/mentally) that they cost the NHS a fortune in treating the after effects.

There's also an argument that the women going into give birth are young and fit, and shouldn't be coming out of hospital with injuries they didn't have when they went in.

The trouble is that anytime someone suggests serious reform of the NHS, the usual bunch of suspects (looking at you Guardian) start yelling about the NHS being "privatised" or "sold off" and so the Govt (of whatever party) backs off - moral courage not being a quality in most UK politicians.

It's not more important because we're women.

It's more important because we are all born.

The errors in my care were identical to errors made for both my mum and my MIL. Both could have ended in disaster, both involved women being totally ignored by arrogant and mean maternity services. My mum was also pushed hard to abort me because they said I was already dead, and she was adamant that I wasn't.

That was 35 years ago.

If we don't keep complaining, there will be another 35 years of people being born who start their lives being put in medical danger.

I kind of resent the implication that I should be more enraged about failing maternity services than failure in any other area of healthcare. It is not automatically more important just because we are women. People are affected by all sorts of issues within the NHS that are equally as important, if not more so.

It’s been like this for years. My first experience of birth was so awful 28 years ago at St Mary’s Paddington that I went for a different hospital and elective caesarean for the second.

Basically I was induced, was left in agony labouring away in front of interested visitors on a pre natal ward. My husband was prevented from seeing me and when he did arrive, ran to get a doctor with a midwife trying to stop him. I was 7cm dilated and the midwife claimed I was not in labour. I then was taken to a Labour ward and 12 hours later gave birth in the operating theatre. I was lucky my DC did not die. My DC was absolutely traumatised. We both were. The post birth experience was even worse.

My health visitor encouraged me to complain but I was gaslighted throughout the whole process. My GP just said I was lucky not to have a bad wound.

Woman’s health is not taken seriously. I had a major autoimmune illness in my 20s. Because I was undiagnosed I was accused of making it up despite being in hospital with a temp of 43 degrees.

My DD2 has various gynaecological problems which are being trivialised. My DD1 had a scary heart episode and was told she was having a panic attack. She is a vet and knows what symptoms are FFS.

The only way to get better treatment is to pay privately.

I don’t think we should have a system like the US but surely some sort of health insurance like they have in Western Europe will be better than this shit.

This is what happened to me. Medically it was fine but throughout I was either ignored or dismissed or at some points lied to. I was left entirely alone for long stretches (I had gone into labour when at hospital with my very ill son) and noone came when I pressed the buzzer, I was in an entirely empty day ward (at night) and just left alone with the labour progressing rapidly. Noone acknowledged my distress about my son who was still in hospital. I can't even talk about my first midwife, who sneered and laughed at me among other things. My second midwife was obsessed with finding her lost cardigan.

The only nice and positive bit of the experience was when they thought I would need interventions and wheeled me into the theatre and the obstetrician and anaesthetist were absolutely warm and lovely and chatted to me and reassured me.

10 years on and I haven't really recovered, and for many years I had awful PTSD.

Birth trauma resolution is part of my practice. I've seen women who had a perfect physics birth with terrible PTSD because of the way they were ignored, spoken to, dismissed. Medically bad experiences don't necessarily bring trauma. Being invalidated as human when you are powerless will.

Having had four births in NHS Scotland, I can honestly say reading this thread is absolutely heartbreaking to read. Like I have read something from s parallel universe. My experiences were mainly positive and couldn't fault the staff. Even when my youngest was born very prematurely, we were still very well cared for.

@Flibflobflibflob

Ah yes, one of the midwives who I saw during my very long first labour kept saying telling me to hurry up and progress or "we'll have to get the doctor in and you don't want that".

Actually I did want that, I wanted it very much and it would have cut my ordeal down considerably.

And I don't think I could turn my back to back baby just by wanting it badly enough - she was big and she was jammed in there and they made me wait a dangerously long time to even attempt to get her out by intervention.

It is truly very sad, and most women have a terrible story to tell.

Fortunately for me, my 'terrible' story was just that I was left completely unattended and the midwife only wrote down that she delivered the baby because she happened to walk in after DH demanded that she come in because I knew I was delivering and she didn't believe me, and just managed to get her gloves on in time to literally catch baby.

She was useless. I was the only woman in the midwifery unit and I was still on my own for the entire birthing process. She checked me when I first arrived and then left me. No painkillers, even when I asked her Student, no using the pool/water, no TENS machine, no birthing ball/stool even though they should all have been available, nothing. DH was told I wouldn't be progressing that fast and basically implied that I was putting it on when I said how much pain I was in. I wasn't even screaming and shouting, I didn't actually make any noise, but I was in agony and desperate for pain relief.

But anyway. It's not that bad in comparison to the true horror stories. But it's sad that we all have a story.