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

I had an amazing midwife for my first labour, and a terrible experience in the pp ward. I had a terrible midwife at my second labour, and great care at the pp ward 🤷🏻‍♀️

A whole string of midwives missed an obvious problem with my pregnancy and a catalogue of further failures after birth left DD with lifelong disabilities :( i was treated like an idiot. The one looking after me at the point of birth was simply horrible, my mum still talks about her!

I really want to say yes, just because it would be funny, but nope I'm afraid not.

Amanda, is that you?!

i generally felt like even gcse double science pass was in the balance for all midwives I saw.. Bang average. 3 kids. High risk pregnancies and nothing but admiration for my obstetrician.
parent of dc3 friend high up midwife and wtf. Total flake.
YANBU

But you can’t just dismiss the experiences described here. If you’re an HCP yourself and a conscientious one, I’m sorry - it must be upsetting to read - but so many women seem to have had an awful time when childbirth should have been a joyful experience (at least emotionally, if not physically!).

Do you have any suggestions as to what would improve things?

Why does women discussing their traumatic experiences make things worse?

I’m sure I had PTSD because of one of my midwives. She was a vicious cow. She’s probably retired now (it was over 20 years ago) and I hope whoever ends up looking after her treats her with the same disdain and roughness that she treated some of her patients with.

She was horrible to one of my friends as well, as I later found out when we were comparing birth stories.

On the off chance that she’s still at large in Colchester hospital and someone reading this has her “looking after” them - complain. I wish I had.

This has really shocked me. Midwives/Nurses feel so undervalued and posts like this make things worse!!!

Unfortunately I think your experience is very common. I was supposed to be having a home birth, I went into labout on a Tuesday night, but my contractions calmed down in the moring so I asked the midwife to come and see me. They visited three times over the next two days at my request because i was having very strong contractions overnight and fluid discharge but they didnt even examine me. I was written off as overdramatic I think... Anyway on the third night i called my homebirth midwife again saying I was concerned and she said "Well I cna come to see you if you want Georgie, but were very busy on the ward....". I felt really bad like maybe I am just being needy, but the next morning I did take myself in against the triage midwifes advice. Finally they did a waters test and my waters had broken on that first night over 75 hours ago and there was meconium in it, so it was an emergency and within 3 mintes I has everyone there in my cubicle, the anetheiologisy, registrar etc getting ye reasy for an emergency c section. From then on I was looked and i actually went into full blown labour as soon as I got gas and air becuase the extreme pain had been blokcing my progression and I didnt even have a c section in the end. By that point though I hadnt slept for 4 night and they hadnt let me eat anything for 24 hours, not even a cup of tea and I had a nervous break from sleep deprevation and they had to call the psych ward about me. All of this drama was 100% avoidable as if they had listened to me on the first night, believed i was in labour and given me some pain relief I would have had her on that first night as I my body wanted to. I'm lucky to have given birth to a health child and I think there were some actual angels looking over me and my daughter on that day. Anyway, no you are not unreasonable, so many women have these expriences its shameful.

I’d argue it can.
The litigation bill for obstetrics is around 2 billion a year.
You could more than double the obstetric consultant workforce for that.
Having more heavily consultant delivered care and presence overnight would improve care.

You are clearly a horrible person. I hope I never meet you in real life. Trashing someone else's positive experience proves it.

Spot on! I feel sorry for some patients who have to come across people in the medical field like someone I know (A friend of a friend). He’s very closed-minded and superstitious, especially about mental health issues. When I heard he was training to be a mental health worker, I was shocked. He said he chose it because there’s money in it! Also, the qualification he’s studying for is mainly because of the bursary he’s getting, I can't remember if it’s yearly or for the entire course. Basically, he's in it for the benefits and this was how the idea was sold to him too. I can imagine he's not the only one just trying to earn but not really caring about the people he sees.

It’s disappointing that for some, the medical field is just about the pay, when some of us see it as an opportunity to help people.

My one and only experience of childbirth was traumatic and whilst some of the midwives were pleasant, others definitely lacked compassion and the caring nature that you’d expect. When I started vomiting, one ran from the room shouting ‘I can’t handle that!’. I agreed to an examination by a trainee midwife for her assessment and she literally couldn’t find my giant cervix! It was very painful so I was gritting my teeth and telling her she was on it, but she kept looking at the senior midwife and saying she couldn’t feel it, so the other one had a go, went straight to it and said it was easy to find. The trainee had another go, couldn’t identify it, even though I could feel she was on it, and she failed her assessment!

You were so traumatised you terminated a pregnancy. That is shocking. I hope midwives and obstetricians read this and understand the impact they have on people's lives...good and bad.

My heart goes out to everyone who has posted about their experiences on here, it has almost brought me to tears and the women who then went on to have more children, wow, that was more than I could find the courage to do. In fact when I did get pregnant again one (though not the only one) factor that influenced my decison to have a termination was terror at the thought of going through childbirth again, I used to lie awake reliving my child's birth and thinking that I would lose my sanity if I was badly treated again and I confronted memories that I spent years hiding from. It was so ironic that when I was in hospital to have the operation the staff were so kind, supportive, caring and non judgemental, I was really cared for.

My experiences on the maternity ward were horrific (monitors used wrongly, drip given unnecessarily (and needle inserted so badly that I couldn't use that hand/arm at all - I asked about 4 midwives before one finally said "oh my god, that does look bad. sure I'll get that out for you!" ), left to lie in bloodied sheets for hours, asked to change my own blood soaked clothes with only one useful arm whilst still attached to a drip?! etc etc) but delivery was great. I assume because that's where they had put the more experienced midwives but I could be wrong? Having read another post here, I'm assuming the reason I was in horrendous pain for days (besides being induced) was because we were back to back. Not one person noticed yet as soon as I made it down to delivery, that was the first thing the midwife said and seemed genuinely surprised I didn't know. Then they had me doing all kinds of stretches and positions to try and flip her the other way (I get the impression I struck it lucky there and there weren't many midwives willing to do what this one did. She was a slightly more mature lady and her student seemed in awe. Would've been an awesome team if, after me already being 3 days in and exhausted, the student didn't make such a mess of breaking my water and then have to pass the job back to her teacher, just to have one thing go smoothly and quickly at that point would've been nice!). Anyway. LO did eventually turn and then the teams changed. The second lot were great too and in the end I asked for the weird wooden low chair in the corner that looked like an antique and the student midwife lay on the floor and caught my baby much like I'd imagine a mechanic working underneath a car with no lifting machinery would have to work! Thankfully the job of stitching me went straight to the more experienced midwife (who still messed it up a bit to be honest but I had no desire to feel like more of an experiment/lesson resource at that point). But yeah. It was enough to put me off trusting a hospital to safely deliver another baby, so I'm one and done.

MWs, not MPs!

Maybe there needs to be though!

Oh yes they could have, in the situations I witnessed. There was no shortage of MPs on the ward but it was clearly a policy to make mothers do this themselves. I accepted this a bit mindlessly for a while but when I thought about it, it seemed wrong.

While you’re actually in the hospital (and particularly for those post-c-section etc) it’s something they could help with. The whole regime seems designed to be wilfully unhelpful and harsh - punishing, even.

Things might be different now but it as genuinely a deliberate (rather perverse) policy when I had my kids, not just a problem with understaffing.

I can’t believe how much the cost of IMs has increased since the insurance thing a few years ago. Less than 10 years ago you used to be able to get full antenatal, birth and 4 weeks postnatal care for less than £4k, now it’s £7k for partial antenatal, birth and 2 weeks postnatal care.

Like most professions, I'm sure there are people who are great at their jobs and people who are not so great. I had fantastic experienced midwives who specialised in home births and were used to working without a safety net. They fitted ante natal visits around my work (8pm appointments worked best) and coped with a massively overdue DC1, a PPH where I lost a litre of blood, non standard presentations for all DCs, and my need to make all decisions relating to labour and birth.

Two pregnancies -both midwives and the rest of the team were amazing, I am very grateful for the lovely and positive experience they provided as well as taking care of me and my babies. Also one, was a complicated birth - not easy and baby and I had to stay in hospital for over a week due to the complications.

I am sorry about your negative experience OP, and everyone else, it shouldn't be like a that at all x

I'm sorry you had experiences like that, I still remember my 1st birth which was utterly traumatic and ended up with my daughter not surviving labour. However the midwife Angela (this was 13 years ago) was amazing.
My second labour was an early induction, and I was petrified obviously due to my firstborn. However again the midwife was amazing, understanding when I'm screaming at her not to let my baby die.
My 3rd was also am early induction and complications, were seconds away from an emergency c section. However she finally popped her head out as the room filled with people ready to take me to surgery.
None of my experiences I found the midwives yo be disinterested

I had a medically advised c section with my first. My experience with midwives both before and after birth, coupled with the horrible experiences of pretty much every other mum I spoke to (ranging from general rudeness, dismissal of pain etc. right up to some poor women losing their babies through pure negligence) meant that I chose a medically unnecessary c section for my second.

I think it largely depends on area, but there is no way I'd have a natural birth at any of my local hospitals.

Yep they ranged from apathetic to offensive and abusive. I didn’t bother with baby 2 and 3 and free birthed because the nhs ‘care’ was so bad.