Men on a post natal ward

[RogueV]

The guy in the next bay is pissing me right off.
He just asked the midwife for a bed. Dick.

Why are they allowed to stay anyway? Shouldn’t they be going home?

Sorry just ranting.

aeth I've stated other women in similar situations may need it too, as have multiple posters.

Blanche I did because I requested it. But had there not been one available it would have been horrible.

A snippet of a report published in 2011 by the royal college of Midwives

This scheme (which is now being rolled out across the country) was shown to seriously help women who give birth at night or during the early hours of the morning and would benefit from support and care from their partners. It can also have the potential to reduce the workload of the midwives as many of the things patients call a midwife for at night can easily be done by a partner.

I had a forceps delivery, attached to a catheder and a vomitting baby. I spent the first night mopping up vomit and ringing the MW for help getting the sheets in the crib changed. She got miffed and told me to find the sheets in the cupboard across the room I shared with 3 other mums. Could I have done with my DH being there? Oh yes. I cried my eyes out the following evening at the prospect of another hellish night on my own. It was awful.

Seline. You have stated in numerous posts that you don't feel comfortable having strangers around/attending you and that you had a private room so your family could attend you.
Many people for whatever reason don't have access to that, so if you had to share a public ward, would you have been happy with strange men there 24/7 with very little privacy and using the facilities that are meant for patients only, thus denying them to you when you most need them?
Bearing in mind what you said about not liking people around you.

Ifangyow it wouldn't bother me whether they were there or not. I don't like strangers around me so if I'm already having strange women around me strange men makes no difference.

Ok, so from the 'I need my DH' side, it's that they are receiving sub-standard care (doesn't surprise me with the NHS).
From the please don't have men on the wards, we have invasions of privacy issues.
The solution appears to be providing better nursing care? But it's the NHS. That's never going to happen.
How can we come up with a solution?

Seline is never going to answer the questions. She needed her man. End of discussion.
We can discuss it without having Seline involved.
The NHS though is a joke.

Seline.
Just change your name to ContraryMary.
You played Hell about the women on the ward using your private loo, now you're saying you would put up with being unable to use the loo on the public ward cos a male is using it, whose not supposed to? Shut up.

Agreed Costner77.

There sure seems to be a lot of dislike of men from women who presumably, as they were on a postnatal ward, had husbands or partners themselves.

Ifangyow if I'm already sharing with several other women why would I care if a bloke uses it too? I'm already sharing.

Until the government put more thought and money into maternity services, I don't think a solution will be found Costner77.

I've just realised that Seline is not the almost identically named poster Seeline who I know from elsewhere...

How can we come up with a solution?

There isn't a solution that pleases everyone so the debate will continue and we won't get a say anyway. Although maybe if we all paid more tax, the NHS might get more money and therefore more staff, which would be a good thing regardless if partners are there or not.

Better nursing care can and does happen already in some places. I think holding up decent postnatal care as an unreachable goal that we’ll just never ever see doesn’t really help. Definitely the poor state of postnatal care needs more general awareness - MN had (have?) an Improving Postnatal Care campaign doing that.

What a fucking absurd mind set you have, seline. Disturbing to say women should like and trust all men cos they slept with one.

More staff Is the only solution Costner in my view.
Doesn’t necessarily need to be more qualified midwives for post natal (although goodness knows I’m sure the delivery wards could do with them).
Housekeeper roles to help with things like clean sheets and food/drinks for women who can’t, support worker role who can help with hygiene and helping mum with baby and perhaps advanced support worker who can help with breastfeeding.
Sadly no one will pay and things like this probably do impact hugely on breastfeeding rates.
So things will remain the same. Women have an awful experience, the guilt is piled onto them for not breastfeeding (if they wanted to) when everything was against them managing this successfully in the first place.
Well meaning men will do the best they can in the time allocated be it 24 hours or 2 hours.
Arsehole men/partners/visitors will continue to be arseholes.
And midwifery resources wasted making said arseholes cups of tea.

Seline.
I thankfully had my babies in my home country, with my husband at my side. Where mothers are well cared for and positively revered.
My husband could have stayed if I had wanted him to, usual single ensuite room, but he was knackered too. It made sense for him to go home once we had eaten our meal.
My DIL however, had her babies here in the UK, and I have never seen a shambles like it. And no, my son didn't stay overnight on the ward either.

There sure seems to be a lot of dislike of men from women who presumably, as they were on a postnatal ward, had husbands or partners themselves.

Seline, surely you can understand the difference between your husband and my husband? And why I might not want to be bleeding, in pain, with trapped wind threatening to escape, a frozen shoulder, engorged tits, catheter up my fanny and sat on an incontinence pad, with your husband only a sheet away?

And midwifery resources wasted making said arseholes cups of tea

Some people get tea from midwives ? Blimey, I couldn't even get my painkillers or a smile.

I like your thinking Unicorn.

If I'm already sharing with several other women why would I care if a bloke uses it too? I'm already sharing.

Seriously!? Wft? Because the more people who use the toilet the more likely it is to be engaged for one. There was one toilet next to my 4 bed ward and another 4 bed ward. That's 8 women sharing a toilet...then add a partner for all of them. It's crazy, and that's just one issue with it. Hospital facilities are for patients.

Unicornfoodissparkle
Absolutely, doesn't have to be more midwives necessarily, more healthcare assistants would be amazing.

I had an emergency c section because of pre eclampsia with my 1st. Had already been in hospital ante natally. Baby in SCBU and I was kept in hospital for 7 days post natally. Husbands weren't allowed to stay then but I really needed the support. It was awful to be surrounded by mothers and babies and all their visitors, celebrating their happy births when my baby was in SCBU fighting to survive. Just going up and down 4 floors to SCBU on my own was awful.

Second baby I was in before for a week, again due to pre eclampsia and having labour induced. I was on the ante natal ward having pessaries to induce labour - had to go to Labour ward to have them and stay for monitoring, back to ante natal ward and then back to labour ward to repeat the process, when they had space. 5 days it took!! In pain all of that time and again husband not allowed to stay. I had no support outside visiting and it was awful. No sleep, painful contractions but no progress. Had a traumatic, very long labour that almost ended in a c section (I begged the dr to try ventouse and it worked). Had post partum haemorrhage but discharged myself the next day despite needing a blood transfusion because I couldn't manage on my own on the post natal ward. I hadn't slept properly for a week and I felt so ill but they wouldn't help me with the baby and wouldn't let me eat meals at my bed - we all had to walk to the dayroom for meals. I had literally just got there to have breakfast, despite not having got up to the ward until 4am, when the midwife calked me to say baby was crying!! At least at home my husband could bring me a cup of tea.

It was barbaric and I struggled with anaemia for a long time after because I refused to stay for blood transfusion. Having someone to help and support me would have made the world of difference.