To think a lot of midwives are.. just not very good?

I think if you are in a MLU unit they are far better. And if you are alone for the birth then I've found they are much more helpful and involved. Out of my3 I've only had the father at the birth for one and I did feel totally neglected compared to when I was by myself

Maternity care in Singapore is definitely obstetrician-led and the numbers -maternal and infant mortality rates- compared to the UK speak for themselves. Singapore was a poor to middle income country just a generation ago.

Couldn’t agree more with your comment.

I’ve worked as an anaesthetist with some obstetric involvement in Australia and Singapore.
In my view both offered vastly superior care.

The first step to improving UK obstetric care is accepting there is an issue.

Had my first in the UK and it was a shambles. I was left at home in pain and vomiting for an entire day and I was not allowed to come to the hospital despite calling 5 times. I ended up in an ambulance because of complications. During the birth I had four different midwifes because I had to change hospitals and the postnatal care was nonexistent. My DH was kicked out within an hour of DD being born and I was sent to a depressing ward where I barely slept. The day after I got home I had to go back to hospital because there were no community midwifes to do checks.

I had my second in the Netherlands and it was so much better. I felt protected and cared for. I had to have an emergency c-section because of complications. DH, DD and I had our own private room to recover, I had a proper bed and DH a folding chair thing which to be fair was not very comfortable. Both of us got food three times a day. Because DD had complications we were actually on the children's ward, but I still had nurses from the maternity ward come look after me. Even had a special phone I could use to call if I needed help. We got discharged after 4 days and we had a maternity nurse for 6 days to look after us at home for a couple of hours a day. She was actually a lovely 68 year old lady who helped care for the baby, care for me and did some light cleaning. I was allowed to relax and recover. Midwifes and health visitors came to our house because it is not done in the Netherlands to require postpartum mothers to do any travelling!

The difference between my first and second birth was Stark. I had PND after my first. I genuinely believe the substandard care contributed to that.

I agree that this is a problem. I’ve had serious issues through medics not understanding me, and me not understanding them - and boy, is it stressful.

But that’s where we are - there’s a recruitment and retention crisis and this is the effect of that.

Yes this was me too! In between outright excruciating pain, I tried to be polite and almost professional, because I felt like I was overreacting otherwise.

Yes I have had 3 deliveries and only my second did I have a good midwife. First one, I was made to feel like an inconvenience for actually labouring and delivering on a labour ward. The 3rd midwife was so disinterested and told me she knew better than I did when I told her that I was almost ready to push after having had 2 babies already! She was totally unprepared when my waters broke and baby was out before she had anything set up in the room. I was so unimpressed I self discharged and went home where I felt safer.

It is sad that so many women on here have had negative experiences. To balance it, I have also had crap experiences with nurses on wards as well just not as often as with midwives!

I requested a c section due to birth phobia. Every midwife was highly negative about it and I had to really push to get them to include in my notes that I was requesting one at each appointment.

I had to go to a birth choices clinic about it and the midwife running it was the stupidest person I have ever met. She listened to me list all the medical complications that I was terrified of me or my baby dying from and went “have you considered a home birth? You might find that more relaxing”. What the actual fuck, why would I be more relaxed about medical complications being 30 minutes drive from a hospital?!

She also gave me a leaflet about the risks of c-section. Except it was comparing first vaginal, c section or VBAC and showed c-section was only marginally riskier. I’m not sure if she was lying or genuinely didn’t understand risk, because she told me it was scary how high the increase in risk was. When I pointed out the paper didn’t really say that she scowled, and when I asked if the c-section stats were just for elective c sections or included emergency ones as well, she said she couldn’t see why that mattered. If you can’t understand why ann emergency c section would be higher risk than an elective one then my god you shouldn’t be allowed give advice.

Tbf, you can't go on videos of other countries anymore than someone can judge ours by watching One born every minute. What happens when recording is different from real life.

I agree. In my experience, I'd say it's because many of them are there just to collect their salary (by collecting all the shifts available), do the basic that's required and go home. It's not about the care and service to people.

The good ones are absolutely amazing though.

Community midwives were great - loved them for the pre and post natal care. Birth unit midwives were fucking hopeless. Didn’t listen to me. Left me on my own, breathing through contractions I should have been pushing with. Ended up with an instrumental delivery and a haemorrhage after a five hour second stage. They don’t listen to women. They’re too wrapped up in what they think they know to actually pay attention to what’s happening.

Had an elective C section for my second. Infinitely better. Still had to fight for it, though, through the cult of natural birth. Maybe if they were less terrible at managing natural births, more women would be prepared to go through them.

My midwife was a nice enough woman. However, I’d been pushing for over 2 hours with my second daughter and nothing seemed to be happening. My mum ended up telling her that if she (the midwife) didn’t get a doctor, then she (mum) would! Anyway, when the doctor came, she actually asked the midwife why she hadn’t been fetched sooner 🙄 DD was born by ventouse about 10 mins after the doctor arrived, which was 2.5 hours of pushing! She weighed 10lb.5 oz.

It was the foreign Doctor who spoke such little English, that I actually couldn't believe he was employed by the NHS, that was the worst person in the Maternity care.

We need rigorous English exams for Health Care Professions before they can work in the NHS.

I haven’t read all the posts but my point is midwives are part of the system and part of the problem, midwives are trained at universities, they are trained to be medical professionals and I think we have lost the essence of birth and how to connect to our bodies.

But the point being made is that a more proactive, holistic approach may help women to avoid some of those complications, but that despite midwife-led units being sold with this promise, it failed to materialise for many of us. Read my post. The doctors and 'medical intervention' was not the problem with my birth. It was available when it became necessary when adequate support in early labour was not made available, despite the explicit and implicit promise it would be.

A lack of proactive, holistic support, justified by a 'non-interventionist' ideology by the midwives was the real problem in my experience.

Should add to that…
What I mean by chavvy parents is: I was being monitored for a day due to pre-eclampsia and the only other pregnant woman in the bay was horrendous. She racially abused staff (shouting at them) and when a visitor arrived she started effing and blinding about people who dressed their girls in blue- which she considered to be a boys’ colour. I lay there, terrified of catching her eye and knowing that my husband and toddler daughter who wore a lot of blue would be coming to collect me!

Dealing with people like that must have an effect on your view of people in general.

I totally agree that the NHS is a very mixed bag - over my life in a variety of contexts I’ve experienced excellent care and absolutely shocking neglect and borderline abuse! I always hesitate to generalise (I know some very good nurses as friends) but my experience on the labour and maternity wards wasn’t a highlight.

The midwives were frankly scary and could be both harsh and dismissive and almost bullying. I remember having a horrible time trying to to feed my first - she just wouldn’t. I was in tears and she was becoming rapidly dehydrated (late August heatwave and the hospital heating was on). A senior midwife stood over me and just glared at me - I hadn’t felt so intimidated since school! My daughter ended up in NICU due to dehydration and guess what - in there, the staff were lovely, empathetic, kind and gentle.

I really hate it when the public moan and condemn categories of people through lack of understanding but reading this thread, it’s clearly a problem in midwifery. I wonder if midwives are hardened by having to deal with nasty, aggressive, chavvy parents and develop a harsh attitude to everyone as a result? It’s the only explanation I can think of.

The problem with medical care of pregnancy and labour is that it is very heavy handed. I’m not a woo person or a hippy or anything, but I think the over-medicalisation and unnecessary interventions of pregnancy and birth has caused a lot of harm stopping a woman’s body doing what it does best. I’m not saying that this is the case for everyone, clearly lots of women need intervention, but rather than treating those cases as the exception, we are treating it as the rule. Men got involved, tried to control and uncontrollable process, and made things worse.

Sounds similar to my experience. The culture is all wrong. Grown women having babies are spoken to like naughty children and treated like an annoyance. Young adult dd recently had surgery in an orthopaedic hospital and the culture couldn't have been more different. The staff were so professional and kind

I wonder if this is on the back of the homebirth thread?

I agree btw. I also wonder if part of this is the language used. I found I barely saw a midwife on the 'midwife led unit' other than when they popped their head around the door and sneer at me for needing to transfer to the 'consultant led unit' when the clock ran down after my waters went.

On the consultant led unit I had 1-1 midwife care throughout, and a specialist induction midwife who was great. Like a different breed compared to the midwife-led unit to the point I am surprised midwives who actually do their job want any association with the 'non-interventionist' kind.

This is absolutely not how it was sold by my (admittedly also very good) community midwives who talked up how active my birth in the midwife led unit was going to be. That might have helped. That is not what happened.

The irony is, as many have outlined here, the midwife-led unit midwives don't offer non-medical intervention when it might have helped. I feel very strongly that if I had been allowed to get into a pool with gas and air when I had originally asked to, my baby would have turned earlier and might have come out quick enough that I didn't need an induction and epidural.

Instead I was given a couple co-codamol and told to go home when I had a kidney injury during a posterior labour.

I agree with the posters who mentioned the maternity wards. I was treated so badly (feels outing to give details as I have shared with so many friends) that I had flashbacks and nightmares months afterwards and I think it contributed hugely to me developing a mild pnd and thinking I wasn’t a good mum and my baby would be better off with someone else.

I was shocked by how bad they were. It was small things, like I had to stay in for a few days with my baby and in the middle of the night they’d all be gathered in the nurses’ station laughing loudly and chatting at full volumes while mums and new babies were desperately trying to sleep nearby. Luckily my bed was a bit further away but at one point my cannula popped out of my hand and blood soaked the bed, my PJs etc. I pressed the buzzer but got no response. Eventually tracked them down all chatting and they admitted they didn’t respond to buzzers because one woman in labour kept pressing it too much and they were fed up of going to her.

The midwives in the delivery room were great. The ones on the maternity ward were annoyed when I asked for help and pain killers.

I wonder if it’s less of a performance issue at this stage and sadly more an ingrained culture in UK maternity care. My grandmother, in her 80s, was treated horribly by midwives during her first birth age 20. Similar experience to many here - not listened to, spoken to with disdain and as if she was stupid, left to labour alone and frightened. Her second birth, she insisted on doing at home as a result.

It can’t be coincidence that so many women over so many years have had such consistent experiences - with the odd exception.

At this point I believe it must be learned behaviour and apathy as such a mass level of underperformance would surely be really unusual.

I think part of the issue is A) it’s a “woman problem” so it’s been ignored and swept under the carpet for forever, and B) no one in authority likes to criticise medical staff, despite them being paid professionals who should be held accountable for their performance. Accountability in the NHS doesn’t seem particularly important and - I speak from experience - unless you want to push legal action, everyone closes ranks and you’re shut out. I’m private sector and if I fucked up as badly as some of the examples on this thread, I’d be performance managed out. The fact that this doesn’t seem to happen indicates that it’s acceptable behaviour / performance to NHS employers.

Being busy is not an excuse for the behaviours described on this thread.