To think if 91 midwives from one trust are under Fitness to Practice proceedings there's a problem with the trust

Gosh these are terrible to read, poor women.

I feel very fortunate that in our health board in Wales we generally see the same community midwife throughout, have private rooms and the care has always been excellent for both my children (one 2022 and one is 3 months old so 2025)

Admittedly things like breastfeeding advice or help was crap in 2022, not sure about now as fortunately I didn’t require assistance second time round

They did try and send me to get all my own meals even though I couldn’t walk for my first baby, they didn’t do that this time everything was brought to my room, regular tea coffee drinks offered, regular obs and check-ins

Theres around 400/420 births per month for our health board, one main university hospital for births and c-sections, a few birth centres, not sure how this compares or how “busy” this is

I generally see a lot of positive comments on their Facebook page, we must be extremely fortunate

I’m really interested to hear how the hospital based maternity service works in NZ. Are there core midwives there? What is the staff-woman ratio? Is the model nhs or insurance?

It would be great if we could look at success stories and use them in the UK.

Continuity of care and especially carer is the absolute gold standard in outcomes. Aside from cost, the biggest hurdle with this is being on call 24/7 for say 3 months at a time and then a month off. The long break is great but how can childcare be organised and never being ‘off call’ is extremely hard.
The Albany midwives in Peckham had this model and women’s satisfaction was very high. Sadly the Albany midwives don’t exist anymore.

I had a relatively positive birth experience, but even in the middle of labour could pick up on the weird dysfunctional vibe between the midwives and doctors, which I’ve never experienced between doctors and other health professionals. Totally inappropriate for a patient to pick up on. Some of the postnatal midwives seemed genuinely sadistic. And my community midwife dropped me like a hot stone as soon as it became clear I wasn’t going to be one of her “success stories” as I wasn’t going to the midwife led unit and was being induced and monitored. This was 8 years ago so before the latest issues.

When I had my twins, the consultant doing her ward round asked me how I was and I said ‘hungry’ so she went off and came back with a tray of food for me . Much nicer that most of the midwives ( some were ok)

So I have given birth in both NZ and the UK, and the experiences were so vastly different.

NZ - had the same midwife most of the way through, the only reason my midwife had to change was because i was put under perinatal mental health and was given a specialist midwife. It's uncommon for people to change midwives in NZ though. You also typically have the same midwife attend the birth that you've seen the entire way through.

• pain relief came pretty much as soon as you asked for it
• breastfeeding support was fantastic and it wasn't uncommon for midwives to spend quite awhile with people establishing feeding (the average length of stay in NZ is also longer even for uncomplicated births, and it's in a private room, no shared bays)
• the midwives were incredibly supportive in labour. And the several admissions I had before labour.

In the UK:

• never saw the same person more then twice
• waited hours for painkillers.
• asked for help changing baby's nappy - I was only several hours post C-section and he had been put in the bassinet, was struggling to reach him, midwife rolled her and was very short.
• communication was terrible regarding what the plan was as there complications for both baby and I.

I would never chose to have another baby in the UK as it was such a shit experience.

But it does appear to be a wider cultural issue and that's much harder to address

I’ve no idea why women should have to get up and get their meals - they should be nurtured and cared for. Giving birth, even when it goes well is such a body and mind changing event. Other wards bring food to their patients! Obviously movement is important to prevent DVT but ….

The wards especially are very task based now due to the volume of people and so rather than caring, the focus is on obs, drug rounds, discharge paperwork. This leads to this dehumanization of people and they become ‘bed 44’ as you say.

The government need to be looking at how can we make maternity care safe and caring, what would work well for women and babies and actually act on those things. We need to get away from factory like processing and seeing ‘patients’ as tasks

I think the reality might be somewhat different

www.change.org/p/protect-the-future-of-midwifery-jobs-fair-funding-safe-care/exp/cl_/cl_sharecopy_491054048_en-GB/10/685591874?recruiter=685591874&recruited_by_id=b897ac20-3500-11e8-a414-f7e3aa94a7fb&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=psf_membership&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_491054048_en-GB%3A10

Three DCs in the 90s. First delivery risked my DC's life. Failed to suction swallowed meconium after a 48 hour labour - should this have been done by a neonatal nurse/dr? Then left overnight with no care. Eventually, cold and listless DC taken to SCBU being fed through a tube. Had to beg to BF. On the ward the only person who helped with BF was a lovely cleaner.
Second delivery retained placenta so D&C. Had to slide along wall to get own breakfast as legs not working properly. Third, had more of a clue but not believed when ready to push. Zero pain relief and told off when exclaimed 'Jesus Christ' during a contraction. Had hoped things would be humane by now (well, back then too, ffs!). Just don't understand why the culture was, and is, so bad. There were some kind midwives but sadly I remember the other ones.

Unfortunate consequences of some NHS units having cultures that saw encouraging natural childbirth as their job. The rot was there at institutional level- the RCB didn't end their Campaign for Normal Birth until 2017, for example.

Sadly women can be very nasty with other women. A friend who has a 15 year old (so it wasn't all that long ago) says that on the hospital antenatal course, the midwife lectured them like they were little kids. She said they all had to have natural births (statistically very unlikely) and must breastfeed (how would she know if some of them had had cancer/experienced abuse/many other things that might affect things?); if someone like this was in charge, could she influence all the others to be like this? More recently, a brave student nurse spoke out against some of the abusive nurses on the stroke ward in Blackpool hospital-look at the way they behaved.

I had my twins in St Thomas' in Westminster. They were great at antenatal but for the birth and post natal they were literally so bad. Inhuman. HORRIBLE. I cant even go into the details because I find it all too distressing even now and my twins are 11 but honestly these were some of the most horrible people ive ever had the misfortune of coming across in a public facing role. Except for one student midwife who helped me up when I fainted in the shower and helped me wash myself. All the others can get fucked. Honestly. I wouldnt want them looking after prisoners. And no they weren't overstaffed. In postnatal I was the only woman in a ward of 6. They were just horrible people.

when I asked one of the HCAs if someone could bring me some food you’d have thought I’d asked for the moon

Me too. The vibe honestly felt like begging a prison warden for favours. They somehow make you feel as if you ought to be apologetic for just being on the ward at all.

Op says "how can 91 midwives be horrible" - but op can't you see how the culture of dehumanising can spread? That was my point about being called Bed 44.

A student midwife might come in with empathy and kindness but see the way other midwives scoff, belittle, ignore or minimise concerns...and start to copy that.

I do not think it particularly correlates with being overworked or understaffed.

Some of the kindest, warmest health care I've ever received was in A+E and you can't tell me they aren't overworked!

Yes this is why I only have one child. I gave birth in Brighton hospital in 2015 and had an awful experience.

I met some nasty ones when I was in the postnatal ward, they just gave the impression they didn't care tbh. It was my first child. I had had a long labour and was bloody exhausted 😩. On a positive note, the care was fantastic with the other three DC. Especially my youngest's NICU experience. I am sure most midwives do care, they just become hardened to the job. They'll see all sorts of not-so-nice stuff but most of the general public don't think of that image of the midwife.

I agree with this.

After my first, I had a PPH. When it came to breakfast time, I still couldn’t even stand without my vision going, and keeling over. DH wasn’t allowed to go to the breakfast room to get me breakfast (fair enough, women in their pjs first thing, so it was a women-only breakfast room), but when I asked one of the HCAs if someone could bring me some food you’d have thought I’d asked for the moon.
But on other wards, patients who are unable to stand without fainting are brought their meals without being treated like they’re making an unreasonable fuss!

Yep, same with lots of NHS staff. The Trusts don’t have the money to employ them.

That’s not the case. There was a story about this recently, 33% of newly qualified midwives cannot find roles. There is a shortage of midwives, but the vacancies aren’t there.

Expectations are just so bloody low in midwifery.

I'm a teacher and we're understaffed, overworked, underpaid too. But if we're anything other than Little Miss Sunshine at every single moment, that's unacceptable. Even when pupils are being objectively very trying.

But if a midwife is "being a bitch", we'll that's just because they're understaffed don't you know. The vibe in the postnatal ward is begging for a glass of water as if for a great boon. I honestly felt a bit like I was in a prison asking for favours off the prison wardens.

Just to be clear I had some very nice ones too and they outnumbered the horrid ones. There was one called Patience and I remember telling her over and over how perfectly named she was. If you're reading this Patience the midwife, thank you!

(And I know being a midwife is a much harder job than teaching)

With that number of people being investigated yes it is an endemic, systemic problem. Now clearly it is possible to do the job in that trust, in a way that doesn’t invite an investigation or they would have 100% of midwives being investigated so there is an element of individual poor practice at play too but it certainly appears that the environment or couture has allowed or encouraged bad practice too.

My personal experience of midwifery care was that I was induced at the city hospital due to Gd and being under consultant led care. I mainly just felt like I may as well have been at home by myself. I was checked on very infrequently and generally left to it. When I felt like I needed to push I tried to get someone attention and was told that they would be there to check in a bit when they’d finished their paperwork. I loudly told my husband to get ready to catch and the MW sighed loudly, came over, took one look, pressed the call button and ran into the corridor to get help becuse I was crowning and needed to be moved to delivery.

i gave birth in the corridor as the bed was being pushed along.

Afterwards I had to push the crib with baby in it to the ward myself, then I was left to it overnight and in the morning I had to make my own breakfast while holding my newborn. They let me leave at 8am because I’d been asking anyone who made the mistake of walking near my bed when I could leave since 4am. No one helped me to leave I literally put DD in her car seat and carried it and my bags out, propping the door open with my foot and loaded her and my stuff into the taxi, didn’t have to sign out or have anyone check that she was being taken home safely.

I'm glad you agree, I didn't get that from your previous comment.

I disagree with your hypothesis that systemic understaffing is more at fault than individual cruelty or cruelty in the culture.

When you come across that kind of dehumanisation, you can see it's not from understaffing. I've seen busy, but lovely and well-meaning, HCPs. They're the ones who don't respond to the buzzer immediately, but when they do, they listen. They're the ones whose eyes flicker to the name plate above the bed and say "how are you feeling - um - Jane?" They're the ones who believe you when you're worried.

Actually it's often the busiest ones who are the most competent