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

This is kinda like complaining about an air steward on a straightforward flight.
They're not there to interfere in a natural process, they're there to manage when things go wrong.
I wonder how many of us would labour without one?

My last 2 labours a student midwife was with me the whole time and they were absolutely fantastic especially with my 5 month old she couldn't do enough for me and was so encouraging ( the labour was pretty quick so got intense fast) but I've had midwives that were useless aswell and wouldn't listen to me i mean its my body I know what I'm feeling better than they do !

I agree, mine was shocking and gave me dangerous advice so I had to go to the hospital for all future appointments. She was given further training. This was 25 years ago. Post c section they all seemed pretty crap,I spent 5 days in hospital afterwards.

Thanks Thea46. I’m sure there are great midwives out there too.

Thank you. - and you’ve put your finger on what I’ve been trying to say! Leaving aside the clinical competence issue, which is separate, that’s what struck me: there does seem to be a culture of ‘not caring, not being supportive or sympathetic’ almost as a badge of honour for some midwives. It’s not so much the not helping people to the loo (to take one eg) as the bossy pleasure they seemed to take in telling mothers that! It was as if they had a thought balloon over their heads which said ‘Don’t think you’re special- we see thousands of births and frankly it’s boring, so shut up and get on with it’. But it IS special to individual women.

It’s definitely a culture, and as such ought to be able to be improved.

I suppose it’s like any job, some people are great at their jobs and some people are shit. It just so happens when a midwife isn’t very good at their job it has a very negative impact on others (their patients).

I have had very mixed experiences giving birth and medical staff who are good at their jobs and care about their patients make a huge difference. With my second baby I panicked when I seemingly went from 2cm dilated to 10cm (No one had checked on me for hours, the call button was put out of my reach and I was completely alone, no birth partner). The midwife in charge of the ward that night screamed in my face to “shut up shut up shut up” when I cried out in pain and fear and baby was crowning. The midwife who actually delivered my son was chill and basically hands off. By the time I got to her though he was nearly out. Between them I did it all myself and out of the 3 times I’ve given birth that one was the most straightforward.

My 3rd baby, I didn’t meet a single midwife who was a dick in any way at all. And I met a lot! Loads of appointments, in and out to check baby was ok, induction ward for 2 days… they were all brilliant, as were the community midwives. Tough birth but all credit to them for being fantastic.

The problem is that none of that hard work excuses being unable to tell if a baby is breech - community midwife confidently claimed baby was head down - I was equally confident I could palpate their skull below my rib cage - she was breech on US shortly afterwards and breech at C section- if I'd listened to that midwife I'd had an undiagnosed breech labour.
It also doesn't excuse being rude on the phone to women calling about reduced movements- which we are told to do!

Personally I think the entire midwife model is outdated and failing. No other high risk area of medicine delegates most care to people without a medical degree and with a very variable skill set. The huge number of maternity scandals in this country are a disgrace and massive nationwide reform of maternity care is urgently needed.

I also think it should be compulsory for midwives & obstetric doctors to have to spend time with some of the children and adults who experience life long harm from maternity complications. Have you actually met any adults left severely disabled due to maternity complications? Or older women with incontinence due to pelvic floor damage? Or families whose baby died - still traumatised decades later? The lifelong consequences of poor maternity care are devastating.

44k midwives. You’ve experienced 2 and wrote them all off.
Both my babies, had several midwives and couldn’t have been more proacticve. Your experience is poor but doesn’t equate to the entire cohort of midwives.

I’m a midwife and is really sad reading through the OPs experience and thread comments, in my personal and professional experience there were a very small minority of midwives (mainly in the past and very specific to certain hospitals, in London in particular) whose care and compassion could have been better. I’ll always remember the very dour faced midwife I had with one of my births, who didn’t even smile once. This was in London and I’ve never experienced another midwife or colleague like this outside of London, although there were also many amazing midwives in London too, it just seemed to be a place of extremes.
The vast majority of midwives do really care but work under tremendous pressures. Working inside the system I can understand how some of these stories come about. Particularly around induction of labour and women being believed that things are progressing or just getting to care and support they need. For the midwife caring for 9 other women/babies who all need monitoring/ drugs/care and a labour ward who have made it clear they can’t accept your lady even if you do think she is probably fast progressing, it is an impossible situation. Add in ladies who are not fast progressing but also coming to you to tell you their contractions are getting stronger. Plus the postnatal new mothers you may also be caring for who are asking for support with breastfeeding and pain relief. In addition the lady crying as she’s been waiting all day to be discharged. Is it any wonder some women end up feeling dismissed. I think some women’s frustrations with their care also come about through misunderstandings, for example many babies start labour back to back but will usually turn during labour and deliver without a problem so it isn’t usually something we’ll make a big deal of unless it does become an actual problem. Reading these forums also, the expectations some women have of community midwives can be very unrealistic and I think some people do confuse the NHS community midwife role with the role of (privately employed) midwives in other countries. I now work in the community which faces its own challenges but I don’t envy the impossible juggle of the ward midwife. Fortunately where I work is generally a very good trust (and rated as such too) and I think we are able to provide a good standard of care most of the time but it certainly is not easy due to the constant time pressures,. I do absolutely love my job and that is down to the genuinely lovely women we care for and the team I work with. I’ve just been on maternity leave and it was so nice to hear so much positive feedback about my team (and the hospital care) from other mothers at the baby groups. I speak to friends who work at other trusts who are expected to work all day and then all night without a break, in clinical areas they are not familiar with and with much higher workloads, cannot understand how they can begin to do a decent job

I went through three midwife shifts whilst I was in labour - the first two were amazing, so kind and reassuring. The first one even “milked me” to help speed up my labour and build up my colostrum stash. She was so dedicated and I could have cried when her shift ended.
The third one still haunts my memories- she seemed so clueless and dithered a lot. I ended up having an emergency c section at 10cm dilated and I could hear the obstetrician shouting at her in the hall about something she had missed.
My first midwife popped back to see me on the recovery ward when her next shift started. So in my experience, 33% are amazing, 33% are very good and 33% probably aren’t right for the job!

How on earth can sharing truthful experiences “make things worse”? Midwives are undervalued because whilst I’m sure there are good ones, too many of us have never met them. If you refuse to hear the truth, and just want to live in an “NHS are all angels” psychobubble, nothing will improve. I find your defensive attitude baffling at best and offensive at worst, frankly.

My first delivery they were so negligent they almost killed me and my baby. The second delivery was similarly high risk and they simply ignored me, until the baby was virtually born at which point they finally agreed “oh yes, you’re in labour”. No care at all. And no, not shortstaffed or overstretched - my bed was near the nurses station and I could definitely tell you they spent a lot of time having cuppas and chatting. We need to change the culture of hospital care across the board in the NHS - too often lack of funds is blamed when actually it’s nothing to do with that.

I’m a midwife and it makes me so sad to read these experiences but I’m also not surprised.These types of midwives do exist unfortunately and there is definitely culture of not caring - i think would be improved by actually having matrons on wards etc instead of literally never seeing them. There are also amazing compassionate midwives but they often get burnt out because of not being able to do their jobs properly due to ridiculous workloads and end up leaving

I actually just was talking about this the other day.

My first labour I was at the birth centre, but ended up blue lighted to the main hospital. The midwife there was coming to the end of her shift (baby arrived at 21:21, shift ended 21:30) and you could tell she wasn’t impressed. She lied in my notes and was just generally unpleasant to me. The other midwife she was working with was as bad. Shortly after delivery I started to feel ill - breathless and dizzy. She told me it was because I hadn’t finished my tea and toast. I disagreed so she agreed to check my Bp and found it was high, as was my heart rate and proceeded to try to convince me this meant I was fine. I was also bleeding what I felt to be an excessive amount. Anyway, she found out I am a nurse and I wouldn’t let it go so agreed to ask the doctor to review me before sending me to the ward. She then stood guard while I spoke to the doctor and told him I was lying with every concern I raised. He agreed with her and that was that.

on the maternity ward I began to pass huge blood clots. The midwives told me it was nothing to worry about and sent me home. The midwife who saw me at home told me not to worry about it when the clots continued and got bigger. She also noticed my fundal height wasn’t shrinking back as quickly as it should but decided not to act on it because I wasn’t in significant pain. On day 9 I took baby to meet some friends, stood up from my seat and felt a huge gush of blood. I ended up back on the maternity ward diagnosed with secondary pph secondary to infection due to retained products. The original midwife had sworn blind to the doctor that I had a complete third stage. All of the signs were there right from the day I gave birth but because of incompetent midwives ignoring the red flags I ended up admitted to hospital in case I needed emergency surgery. They tried to encourage me to have a blood transfusion but I declined because by that point I was sure they would mess it up.

Anyway, this wasn’t a case of one bad midwife, it also isn’t in my opinion a case of the system failing. It was a case of poor clinical judgement and perhaps a culture of all blindly believing each other, and assuming a woman who says she’s bleeding excessively after birth just didn’t know what to expect. Having had a second child now (and also having seen my blood results) I don’t doubt for a second that something was already wrong right after I gave birth.

I've read a lot of Ellen Pasternack's columns recently (biology researcher at Oxford who focuses quite a lot on women's rights).

She has a good point here : that until recently women bore most of the opportunity cost of kids. Especially the injuries of childbirth. It's only now that we're beginning the move towards a better world in that regard - at least I hope we are.

Definitely though the midwifery/maternity care problems in the UK do seem particularly bad.

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/parenting-as-a-public-good/

So I’m not allowed to share my experience because it was a positive one? You bore off 🙄 pathetic.

If your son hadn't been there, your DIL and grandchild probably wouldn't be, from what you've said? That's awful. It's great that your son did so well advocating for them, but he shouldn't have had to-some women have no partner, or else their birth partner is scared to argue with "professionals".

I think it’s complete luck of the draw of who you get. My first birth was everything I didn’t want, but had the most amazing midwife! But the triage midwives were SO rude when I went in. But the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep, she stayed with me as she knew I needed support.
My second was my dream birth, but he was born 6 minutes before shift change and so literally left in the birth pool whilst they did handover. I was cold!!!
Third, amazingly caring midwives but when I said I was getting close, they said they had to monitor me and I barely made the delivery room. All 3 have had positives and all 3 have had negatives!

Also would like to point out- we don’t just do obs.
ive personally resuscitated two babies successfully at high risk home births I did not want to attend as I felt my registration was at risk.
I’ve held the hand and cried with women who have lost their babies, taken their footprints, cried for days after at home.
Ive gone out my way to give extra appointments to women who are anxious, I’ve missed my own children’s important life events to stay with a woman who is almost delivering so I can give her continuity, I’ve been covered head to toe in amniotic fluid, blood, poo and the rest. And I’ve taken a real time pay cut throughout the last ten years. And so much more. The emotional, physical and psychological toll this “job” takes is something else.
All the time the news, trust and public are hating us at the moment.
Noone sees the real issue- underfunding from government, lack of staff and shit management.
And why do Midwives do it- because midwife means to be with woman. And I would say the majority of us are massively dedicated. We wouldn’t survive if not.

Is this not a feature of every single profession? Not everyone is exceptional at their job?
My children have been taught by some truly excellent teachers, and also by some absolutely dreadful teachers. I have encountered great doctors, and awful doctors. I trust one car mechanic locally, but not another.
Midwives are only human, and they are working under a massive amount of pressure, scrutiny and expectation.
YABU.

Sorry if this upset you, honestly the ones that were good were a god send. Your role is valuable. You deserve to be remunerated well for your role and better working conditions. It’s just the ones who aren’t have left irreparable trauma for some x

I’m a midwife and god damn- this post is absolutely soul destroying, in a job where I never have a lunch break, and work late every day. Truth is we are massively under staffed and working more and more with so many complexities we weren’t originally trained for.
Like any “job” you might not see what they are actually doing.
Yes there are “not good” midwives who are not dedicated but they are definitely in the minority. People don’t go in to this job for the money, working hours or lifestyle.
we see life, we see death, the NHS is killing us as a profession with the non stop pressure. Please don’t think all midwives are shit because the majority aren’t, we do just want to care for you and advocate for you as a new mum.

I had a mixed bag. Ones that were good were a literal god send and the bad ones traumatised me. I find community midwife’s are pretty poor and their roles are diminishing. I had a midwife who retired a few years back, she was from the old stock. Absolutely brilliant. Wealth of knowledge and a powerhouse when it came to aiding me during the first few weeks in PP. She kept me until the very last she could and then discharged me. In contrast the ones on the ward allowed me to suffer on my own during a horrendous failed induction as well as ignoring all signs of an infection which could have been fatal. So it’s really a mixed bag but I’d say over all poor because otherwise the maternity sector wouldn’t be failing.

One if the problems here is shit management. Most midwives are great, but the odd dreadful one is not being disciplined.

My first hospital midwife was appalling, tried to carry out an un-needed episiotomy without consent (I had to thrash about to stop her while shouting I didn't consent) along with too many other failings to document. The hospital apologized.

The second homebirth midwife was the most wonderful person. The first midwife was nothing to do with being understaffed, both the midwifery centre and the ward were empty. She was just shit.