Snoring on hospital ward. Losing.my.mind.

[Travellingatthespeedoflight]

A moan. I had a baby today (!) and thanks to a some beast snoring at a ridiculous volume in our bay in the postnatal ward, no sleep is happening. I also happen to be in the bay next to the sink, where the light is brighter than the sun.

Send help! I am here until Friday at least.

Well you are lucky not to be a damsel afraid of men. Not all women are so lucky. You don’t know the experiences other women have at the hands of men. Just look at the stats for rape, physical abuse, mental abuse and have a think.

I had my baby this Summer, 3 nights on the induction ward and 3 on the postnatal ward after my emergency section. My husband stayed with me throughout my stay, as did the partners of the other 4 women on the ward, after baby was born and I’m so glad because I was attached to drips left, right and centre and I physically couldn’t reach baby without ripping them out. When I pressed the buzzer for medication, I was lucky if someone came - the lack of staff was astounding to me.
IME, the people there during visiting hours were worse. When I was being induced, a man came to ‘visit’ his partner. He found a bed in an empty cubicle and lay on it, watching videos on his phone at full volume. He also kept looking through the tiny gap in my curtains (which kept appearing every time next door opened theirs). A woman who came to visit during the day on the postnatal ward was walking up and down the ward on FaceTime, at one point she actually turned her phone to face me and my baby. We had to have the curtains open when I wasn’t feeding or changing baby as it was hotter than the sun in the cubicle.

My partner had to stay because I couldn't feel my legs, and midwives were too busy to hand me my baby each and every time I needed to pick him up. Luckily we had a private room though as I had a particularly difficult time.

You don't know anything about my background

Men absolutely shouldn't be on the maternity/postnatal wards overnight at all. The end.

Why are men asleep on a postnatal ward? Id wake him up and ask him to stop.

Similar experience on an Orthopaedic ward back in 2012. At 52 I was the youngest by two decades and several were demented an spoke out loud to nobody in particular as well as snoring.

Sound deadening 'active' earpieces helped a bit.

I agree, they shouldn't be.
Unfortunately, they are being used as midwife care because the workload can't be covered by the staff they have. It was the same 20 years ago when I had DD, 18 years ago when I had DS and has only got worse.
I can hand on heart say that the "care" I got after both births was terrible. The breastfeeding support I got -which was once in a very hurried 5 minutes -left me with actual finger shaped bruising as the midwife was so rough and angry.

So what happens if there is another child at home and there is no partner available to stay overnight? Or just no partner?

I had to be on my own as DH had no option but to stay home with DD who was 2. I had to just manage. It was shit. I discharged myself and went home ASAP as I had better care at home than in hospital. That's why men are being allowed to stay on wards -to "help" with care that should be provided by midwives.

These men arent helping. The twit was asleep and he will know he snores - they always do.

Realistically what on earth is a selfish snoring man doing on a maternity ward snoring his head off. The OP says that he is at it most of the time so he is no use to anyone including his partner.

Yes, I have heard about random men looking at women breastfeeding, stinking out the women only toilets and generally making a nuisance of themselves. In other countries this really wouldnt be tolerated and yet here in the UK its everyone for themselves.

This is madness, my dh went to work when I was in hospital post partum. I cannot believe it is now the norm for every partner to sleep in the ward.

Congratulations op. Obviously you need earplugs or a quiet word with the partner of the snorer and ask her to show some consideration for others and send him home.

What would happen if a patient kicked up a huge fuss about it? Surely they'd have to remove the random men? If someone had been watching me breastfeeding I'd have called the police from bed.

Assuming other people on the ward also just gave birth, I could kinda understand the snoring. Exhausting

'Unfortunately, they are being used as midwife care because the workload can't be covered by the staff they have'

Surely not, midwives deliver babies and give meds, check blood pressures etc. Men aren't doing that. They're maybe assisting like HCAs would with personal care but why, women are perfectly able to do this themselves and if they do need a hand to the bathroom then there are usually plenty of HCAs kicking about.

Complain op, he needs to go.

totally agree. He will be sleeping in a chair so not proper rest neither. He would do much better to be going home getting some proper sleep and being refreshed and ready to help his partner when she comes home. Men do not belong on a. women's ward. I would have felt really uncomfortable with this. My DH had to go home when I gave birth and I would have sent him home anyway!

Not maternity, but another ward. I had been in hospital for months, emergency admission to ICU, followed by emergency surgery and a very very very long spell in HDU. When they sent me to a normal ward (and it was back in the day, the old Nightingale layout), I just couldn’t bear the noise. I ended up closing my curtains and crying. But I couldn’t stop. Genuinely couldn’t. I was sort of watching myself wail, and thinking “you have to stop, you’re disturbing everyone,” but I just couldn’t. The whole place gradually fell into silence. Eventually a senior nurse came and put me in a wheelchair, and took me, still howling, to a side room. I can’t remember how long it took me to simmer down, but the relief when the door closed was huge.

Told to me by a midwife friend the other day. Its a desperate situation some days. They don't have anywhere near enough staff on wards to cover things like helping with toilet trips etc. There certain are not plenty of HCA kicking about. Maternity services are in turmoil.

Oh god I feel your pain! I had a baby a few months ago and in the bay next to me, was a woman who kept playing (what I assume was) Tiktok videos over and over and they were so loud. I would’ve preferred it if she just played normal music on Spotify, full songs, but instead it was just constant bursts of 30 second random music. A lot of them were weird childlike computer generated voices (I’m showing my age here but the only thing I can liken it to is the voice in “Lonely” by Akon at the start of the song where it’s like “Lonely, I am so lonely, I have nobody…” if anyone knows what I mean by that 🤣). I didn’t notice it so much in the day as my boyfriend was there, there was a lot going on, but when she did it through the night as well, i was incredulous. I overheard one of the other new mums complain to a midwife who told her to stop, but a couple of hours later she did it again. That time i mentioned it to a midwife but it just kept happening!

Hell is definitely an NHS post natal ward. My first experience of one 20 years ago (Guys and St Thomas') during a 5 day stay had:

The woman in the bed opposite screaming, and screaming, almost continuously, for no apparent reason, all day and all night until eventually after 2 days social services came and took her baby away. She was sectioned soon after.

The woman diagonally opposite had had a cesearian and couldn't get anyone's attention to change her oveflowing catheter bag so tried to do it herself and ended up dropping her newborn onto the tiled floor from height. Baby was rushed to special care. I later heard from the mother, months later, who was taking action against the trust because her baby had received a serious head injury.

I had to wheel my baby, alone, to special care on a different floor, every day because nobody was available to take him, for phototherapy after he had almost died during the birth due to an incompetent, hung over midwife, who reeked of alcohol fumes and had to eventually be stood down from duty (it was between christmas and NY).

A health care assistant screaming in my face becasue I had put my bloodied sheets that hadn't been changed for 3 days in the wrong bin.

I had to physically break into a locked cupboard to get a breastmilk pump as there was nobody free to help me try and establish breastfeeding and they couldn't find the key.

An entire family of about 11 spending all day with the woman in the corner, drunk, until the man slapped the women in the bed who had just given birth because he had convinced himself the baby wasnt his. No one came to throw him out, despite the screaming and shouting, other family members removed him.

It was consistently dirty, grubby and boiling hot.

I was assured that much had changed and lessons learnt etc (and subsequent experiences at a different hospital were slightly better). I'm always saddened on here to see that things haven't actually got much better and women are still having terrible post natal experiences. It shouldn't be like this and isn't in many other countries.

Doesn't sound like his partner is getting much from him overnight but broken sleep. He shouldn't be there.

I will never understand how people are so self absorbed that they do this, it's in every situation you can think of now. But hospitals, hospitals are not a place of recovery any more.

Congratulations on your new baby!

I've never been on a maternity ward but honestly, spending any time on a hospital ward is just annoying and full of irritations from the other patients. I was in hospital for a fortnight a while ago and in addition to other patients snoring there were also patients randomly shouting out and screaming in the night, patients in adjacent beds loudly chatting to each other at 5am, patients watching stuff on their phones with no headphones literally throughout the night as well as during the day, and patients who had their entire extended families visiting them eating KFC family buckets and letting kids run around the ward, gawping at people and pulling back their bed curtains etc.

There should not be men on a ward where women have just given birth.

I think this thread has gotten a bit confused - is it the snoring that's the problem or the man being there?

Snoring isn't a personality flaw, neither is it something that can be helped. __I was the snorer on my ward and I was so anxious about being spoken about like PPs on this thread that I forced myself to stay awake for nearly 3 days and nights. I only allowed myself to sleep for an hour or two in the daytime from day 2 - but was well aware that people visiting would have heard and would have been making fun of me. It was a miserable time and I was a total mess by the end of it. DH tried so hard to convince me that it was all on my head but I see that that's not the case from some of these replies!