The report into the Nottingham maternity failings has been released (may be triggering)

[MinnieMounjaro]

I've been following this story quite closely in anticipation of the report being released. It has been released today. It is truly devastating. The final report says over 500 mothers and babies were affected. There is an article in the Guardian about some of the mothers who were affected by the appalling care failures. My heart goes out to all of the families affected. www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/22/nhs-maternity-scandal-nottingham-report-five-stories

Just wanted to add that I had my youngest 2 at lincoln and I couldn't recommend or rate them highly enough. I was having huge panic attacks both times (i struggle talking about birth at all, never mind when its actually me) and for the 2024 baby I had a student midwife and she was absolutely amazing, held my hand and was just brilliant the entire time. She's called Gracie and shes an absolute credit to lincoln maternity ward.

I just want to say that I am so very sorry that this happened to you. I am also sorry that you haven't felt you can talk about it with family and friends although sadly when I read that I didn't feel surprised.

I don't think women are encouraged to speak up about these things and amongst my group of friends the water births were glorified to such a degree that I felt ashamed I didn't manage it with either of mine! I think there's a mythology around childbirth which needs doing away with so that women are better prepared and know what care they can and should expect. I attended classes where they said you should never speak about your birthing experience so as not to scare other pregnant women - that's wild when you think about it!

I was actually shoved out of one online birth-club group because no one else wanted to hear the horrid stuff that had happened to me in case it scared them.

I still keep what I tell people rather light hearted because I learnt early on the societal expectation is to be grateful you got your baby and keep your gob shut. Really we're not that far off Gilead at times - depressingly.

I'd never talk about it with my family, my husband is equally traumatised in his own way (the bucket of shredded placenta being a notable highlight) so he doesn't ever want to talk about it either. I've been plagued by flashbacks since the report came out - last night was particularly rough. I'll get over it though - it needs to be processed in my brain and packed away again.

Firstly I'm so very sorry for what you have gone through. I was listening on the radio a few weeks ago to a lady talking about her birth experience at the hospital. It was horrific.
I am surprised that this thread doesn't have more traction. Are people avoiding it because it is triggering or because they feel it doesn't apply to them? Are we just accepting of poor standards in maternity care and thankful to get through them?

This article really horrified me. Why is it being reported separately? The headline should say it was babies. It’s absolutely horrific, and I cannot imagine the trauma of the families after everything they’ve already been through. Medical professionals judge women for mistrusting maternity and birth services but what do they expect? Where’s the outrage by the profession here? I suppose it’s reported separately because the mortuary and postmortem is separate to midwifery and birth services, but the two are absolutely linked in how women and babies are treated. Inhumane and no dignity.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce95r7gvm5go

The heatwave seems to have knocked it down the news agenda remarkably fast - which I'm angry about as one of the people who submitted evidence and has a large dollop of trauma that's been raked back up, but I'm kind of glad about in a way as I can go back to ignoring the trauma.

Disappointed in how MN aren't more vociferous though - but that mentality of "if you got your baby don't complain" is quite dominant with some.

I think, as @TorturedParentsDepartment puts it, there's a societal expectation that if you get away with with a healthy baby and your own body reasonably in tact then you should just feel grateful and be quiet. But when you really start listening to people, so many have stories that, whilst nothing like what these parents had to go through, are still completely unacceptable in terms of care and compassion for new parents and their babies. But it's so rife, i think it's been normalised.

My community midwife warned me when I was due with my second child not to leave the hospital if they tried to send me away saying I wasn't dilated enough, because they had had so many women giving birth in the car park and the reception of the hospital who had been told this! And that had just become accepted...!

@TorturedParentsDepartment my heart goes out to you. I wish I could give you a hug and listen to your story. I can't imagine what you are going through.

The thing is also, because society expects us NOT to talk about it, we don't get to compare notes and spot these patterns of shit practice sooner - which is why it took a good decade for this one to come to light.

Everyone thinks it's just them having a freakishly bad experience, or that they "deserved" how they were treated (I fell into that trap for a good while) or that this is just "how it is" because no one talks.

One of the biggest reasons they get away with it is that women and babies who've suffered near misses and failures in care aren't exactly overwhelmed with free time once the baby is there!

I had a high risk pregnancy, and they failed to treat some conditions (whilst taking me through repeat GD screenings), and lo and behold, I found this out whilst I was being admitted to hospital to give birth. I still have the paperwork knocking around, but I haven't had the mental energy or the time to address it.

I think you've all raised really valid points.

I remember reading my own hospital notes and thinking that's simply not true, being really angry about it yet too exhausted to act. That the only person who actually listened and helped me on the postnatal ward was a student midwife, who ultimately got my baby transferred to NICU.

Why do they treat mothers like this? Why was it so bad in that particular hospital?

Overall UK maternity care seems very bad : why?

And why are so many midwives so cruel to other women?

Once a bad apple gets in and gets their claws into a position of influence, it can change an entire environment.

Some people go into the caring professions for the best of reasons. Frankly others go in because they can be in a position of power over vulnerable people. I used to work with social workers and honestly, two of them were evil. (one was superb, the others okish, but one of the evil ones used to isolate them in turn and wear them down til they had breakdowns or left).

Gave birth in NCH twice. Did not surprise me to hear from the report, how the midwives spoke about mothers. I had a midwife half drag me out of bed, through the ward to the shower. She marched me out pulling me by my catheter (full bag of piss attached)
I was walking like bambi, terrified and sore, hours after my emergency section at 3am, following 3 days of contractions and complications.

She turned round and rolled her eyes " yeah ive had 3 sections myself" I hadnt even complained, i was just walking slow. Hadn't the energy to complain at the time

Theres much much much more I could say but I know im lucky to have made it out alive with healthy babies.
Women were treated worse than cattle in there. It was absolutley horrendous. They do not listen to one word you say. The actually had a hatred for thw women in their "care"

It’s horrific. I don’t think a lot of it isolated to this hospital in terms of how women are treated. I had PTST from my first birth (at a different hospital), just the way it was managed and how I was spoken to by mid wives also on the ward where I had to stay due to c section. I also heard how they spoke to other women on the ward. Like they were complete nuisance. I opted for elective c section with my other children. I would not go near a midwife again. Having said that I have met lovely midwives who gave good care too, but they are far and few between and lot of them is very against intervention.

I gave birth at QMC. The birth was great. The postnatal care was horrific. My baby’s blood sugars were funny so she went to NICU for a week. I was left on my own in a side room with no one to talk to, nothing to do, and no visitors allowed because of Covid. Basically just a bed to lie in for a week without the baby but no tv, no company, just white walls. Eventually I got really cross, especially when another mother had visitors, so they got a psychiatrist in and tried to get me committed. The psychiatrist told them there was nothing wrong with me, I was just really angry at being isolated for a week without updates and without visitors, especially my kids at home who I was desperately missing. They let us leave after 10 days (it turned out that after the first two days there’d been nothing wrong with her, they were just doing investigations and there was nothing wrong when we left). They made a revenge referral to social services who called me when I got home and, having listened to my story, they discharged me without even visiting.

I have to drive past it on a regular basis and it still gives me shivers. I know that people had much worse experiences there, and I should be grateful.

When I was pregnant some years back, I got into a heated conversation with a midwife who lived in Nottingham (I clicked her profile) and so I assume worked locally. It was about home dopplers. I was using one and she took the view that it was oh so dangerous and causes many baby deaths a year because women listen the heart rate and think everything is fine, even if baby isnt moving well. I suggested the PSA should say something more like "if baby isnt moving normally, go the hospital, EVEN if their heart rate seems fine" VS "dont use home dopplers at all ever".

She couldn't accept that you could encourage women to always go in for a check up if they were concerned without banning these devices. It all came across as very paternalistic and like a focus on the wrong thing. She seemed to think the home dopplers were somehow hurting the babies rather than maybe a disproportionate number of women in her hospital losing or near losing babies in the womb. Perhaps, as it seems, due to some pregnancy complication they actually missed in their routine antenatal care.

@lilyboleyn I know this sounds flaky - but I'm so glad to meet someone else who got hit with the social services revenge referrals by them - it overshadowed YEARS of the kids' childhoods being scared I had some kind of mark on my record after they did that.

Fucking hell. I can"t believe the stories about the revenge social services calls. That's beyond insane. I thought I was the only one to have have something like this. I'm a lawyer by training and they threatened me with a court order to keep me on the wards when the maternity units were closed, it was over 100 degrees on ward and a midwife had told me I could rest at home nearby in the first stage of induction. I literally just tried to follow instructions and they treated me like a stupid lying cow that they could bully with referrals.

I'm staggered because I haven't seen this in the truly awful stories of maternal and baby harm, but it is clearly a thing. I don't say this lightly but some of the midwives on that ward were vindictive controlling witches.

I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with the baby after her blood sugars levelled off. On Friday, day 8, they told me a consultant would check her on Monday and release us to go home. I said, can I take her home for the weekend so I can see my other children (there was no medical reason why not) and they said if I did that they’d prevent her from leaving and call the police and social services because she had to be signed off by a consultant before leaving. I thought this was ridiculous and wrote to PALS and went on hunger strike to try and get us released without that stupid weekend gap, so they were very cross with me. They took great delight in telling me they’d made a social services referral but the social worker must have had an inkling it was a revenge referral because we had such a short conversation before she signed me off - I wondered at the time whether the social worker was used to the hospital making revenge referrals.