To Ask for your experiences of post natal wards

[RozziPringle]

Mine was Noisy and hot with incredibly overworked midwives. The most memorable incident was around 12 hours after a c-section i was made to get out of bed to walk along 5 corridors to shower, doubled over in agony. When i told the widwife i wasnt going to make it and i felt faint she tutted and muttered about me been lazy under her breath.
There were some fantastic midwives Don't get me wrong but they seemed few and far between.
Im due to give birth in 3 weeks and im dreading going through all this again

Doh - obviously I mean the staff were under staffed!!!

Just read through the thread and seen a couple of other people have singled out the west London hosp with a bad postnatal rep.

Worrying.

If you're in W/SW London and wondering, go to Queen Charlotte's, not The Other One.

Did anyone watch this weeks panorama ? They were talking about maternity wards being understaffed, ( London being the worse) it was quite frightening to see how things can go wrong due to poor staffing levels, I didn't realise that the two maternity units near me shut their doors to people 5 times last year both at the same time, god knows how far people had to travel to the next maternity unit

One of the worst nights of my life, I self-discharged to avoid being kept in another night.

DS wouldn't feed, I had had traumatic birth with Kielland's forceps and because it was busy, no one came anywhere near me literally as soon as he was out. When dh was sent home, I had a catheter and was in a lot of paina nd couldn't sit up but I wasn't allowed change him on the bed but on a very tiny flap on the cot which I couldn't reach and couldn't get up and walk to due to spinal block for forceps. I dropped some wipes and the midwife shouted that I'd "better clean those up". I couldn't get him to latch on and her "help" was to do that awful whacking him on my boob while I was crying thing. I said it hurts and she said.. and I am not kidding.. "of course it hurts you stupid girl, it's going to hurt. This is about your baby, not you". She was really, really nasty.. and I could hear her being the same to others on the ward.

I spent the night crying over my small baby because he was screaming (probably in pain from the forceps and also struggling to feed), literally sobbing, saying "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry" again and again. Must have been horrendous for the others on the ward, and it brings tears to my eyes to even think about it now because I literally felt so low and bereft and alone.

Will do anything to avoid that again...

Kingston hospital:

DD prem birth and EMCS - wonderful. NNU - wonderful. PN - shocking. I was confused and upset, I had no idea what was going on and apparently no one would tell me - and it was my fault for not being in my bed when anyone (apparently) came to talk to me - never mind that I was in NNU. The midwives seemed to ignore me as I didn't have a baby with me. NNU gave me all the breastfeeding/expressing support, PN ward wouldn't supply me with a pump "since that was NNU's job". I was in three nights in a ward with other women and their babies - to be honest I didn't really notice, I was a bit numb. They did try to move me to another ward but they didn't explain why so just got me more upset, I felt so helpless and out of control and no one would say why they were trying to move me. Food was terrible. On the last day I cried when I saw my lunch. I really didn't care about leaving my baby in NNU, I knew she was in the best place - I just wanted out of that damn place. My mood improved as soon as I stepped through the door of my own home.

DS - ELCS - wonderful. PN - middling to good, a private room and a few good staff and most of this was down to me being a second timer rather than the hospital. I knew the food would be terrible so I'd brought in my own snacks and got deliveries of all my other meals from visitors - M and S salads, quiche, sandwiches from the sandwich shop. Someone (who knows who she was!) had a go at me the first night that I hadn't touched my tinned ravioli and mashed potato with grey peas and fortunately my mother was visiting at the time and went for her, pointing out from the empty packets that I'd had quiche and salad and their food was inedible. That time apart from breakfast no NHS food passed my lips! I knew what I was doing with the baby, I knew the hospital's procedures and just wanted to be able to get on with it and go home.

In hindsight I'd have coped much better the first time round if it had been my second birth, if that makes sense. I was just so bewildered and upset and helpless and felt entirely alone, like I'd fallen through cracks.

Nurse Anne's take on maternity wards is interesting, and, as usual has taught me a few things I didn't know.

It even mentions Mumsnet.

Jeckadeck - my exact experience, too. The birth was relatively trauma-free but I absolutely agree that being bashed over the head with how I MUST AT ALL COSTS breastfeed my baby ultimately led to the fact that my DS is formula fed. It's all very well and good providing lots of "how-to" support, but there was absolutely no consideration for the feelings of a first-time mother.

Balloon that is a really interesting blog post indeed

If true, that explains a lot about the assistants I saw, who seemed kind of useless

Would nurses on the maternity ward improve things? It sure sounds like it would.

That Nurse Anne blog is interesting as you say but two points:

1. It's not the fault of the mothers that the ward is understaffed either, so don't take it out on them. Go postal on the bosses instead.

2. I had no idea there were no nurses on a PN ward. How could I? I'm pretty well read on current affairs and the situation with the NHS but I'm not up on the intricacies of hospital structuring. I'm surprised and slightly horrified actually. But to say "Maybe if the public... could actually get their semantics right they would have a clue about what is going on rather than that uninformed paranoid hysteria that they direct to frontline staff" is unfair. How on EARTH are us civilians supposed to know?

Im pretty sure there were nurses on mine. Midwives, nurses and assistants.

What I thought particularly interesting was that she implied that it was lobbying by the Royal College of Midwives to have birth less medicalised - arguing that postnatal mothers and new babies are not ill, and should not be treated as such and dictated to by Doctors, that has caused this to happen.

I certainly agree it was bizarre to keep women in hospital for 10 days, no matter how straightforward their birthing experience, as they did in the 60s and 70s.

Yet now, you don't get to stay in unless you have been made ill in some way by childbirth, yet you have the staffing levels appropriate for "not ill, just had a baby."

Awful. 1st time after baby with shoulder dystocia, retianed placenta and PPH, in a ward of 6, babies cried all night, including mine. Midwives playing Solitaire on the PC. After 6 hours off DD screaming, I asked for help with BF - was told to 'pull myself together' - by this point my nipples were bleeding and bruised. NO care, NO compassion, filthy bathrooms - I was bleeding so heavily that the bed flooded a number of times - I felt like nothing but an inconvenience. The midwifery assistants were horrible - they reduced every woman in that room to tears in the time that I was there. Prior to discharge, I had to ask them to check my Hb (I'm a nurse so knew I'd lost a hell of a lot of blood) They took the blood, told me it was normal and sent me home. My discharge level recorded a blood loss of 100mls. After 12 hours at home, I started to pass clots and bits of tissue. At 4am , rang the labour ward and was told there was nothing they could do. the start of a 4 month saga of infections, D&Cs, shit care. I eventually asked to see my notes. My blood count prior to discharge was 7.2. Complaint lodged - loads of platitudes and back peddling and am sure not a great deal has changed.

2nd time - shitty induced labour with eventual EMCS with twins. Wheeled into a side room at 4 am with no buzzer. Next check was by a midwifery assistant at '10' am - my IV fluids had run out an hour earlier. She switched the pump off - the drip was disconnected 6 hours later. I had to change the inco sheets in the bed myself. My catheter then became dislodged - it was dragging and I was in agony. I asked 4 people if they could remove it (would have taken approx 1 minute) Eventually asked a student nurse to bring me a syringe and did it myself. Midwives less nasty than on the first ward - incredibly over worked, stressed and hassled. But pre occupied with getting me to agree to have a photographer and reporter from the local rag visit to do a 'BABY of the Week' feature Discharged post CS with BF twins 36 hours after birth.

Incredibly cathartic to write it all down. Shit though!

Nurses don't work on maternity wards, mental health, learning disability adult and paediatric nurses do some of their training together but midwifery is completely separate it's a totally specialist subject. You do get paediatric nurses working in nicu but an adult nurse couldn't just get a job as a mw they would have to do an adaptation course, mw is also the hardest nursing speciality to get into

What about post surgical wards?

If you mean post surgical wards dealing with child birth where I live you go onto the same ward as everyother new mother so are looked after by mw, if you go on to a post surgical ward dealing with all types of surgerys you would be looked after by adult nurses

Mw just arnt called nurses, they train under the school of nursing but because it is such a specialist subject the training they have is all to do with pregnancy and birth, other nurses do abit of everything mental health nurses do placements on adult wards, adult nurses do placements on learning disability wards etc , you are much better being looked after by a mw than an adult nurse, they don't do enough training to do with pregnancy and post pg complications etc

Exactly -- for many mums, the postnatal ward is a post-surgical ward. So it seems quite strange not to have nurses and such.

Balloon: 'What I thought particularly interesting was that she implied that it was lobbying by the Royal College of Midwives to have birth less medicalised - arguing that postnatal mothers and new babies are not ill, and should not be treated as such and dictated to by Doctors, that has caused this to happen.'

I think that's really interesting as well. Perhaps there needs to be another level of triage in postnatal, something between no complications (midwives) and high dependency unit (obviously very medicalised).

Sorry, I meant nurses in addition to midwives

(please excuse my rampant ignorance of how things work!)

Midwives are nurses, there are 5 different branches of nursing and mw is just the one that deals with pre and post pg, they will be trained to deal with triage situations, I think the main problem with post natal care is understaffing rather than lack of training

We need a Venn diagram on this I feel .

Okay, as I understand it from that article, postnatal wards are staffed by midwives and health care assistants, that's it. The HCAs are not trained to do much of anything which is why the midwives are so busy.

How is a post-surgical ward staffed? And what is the rationale for treating the postnatal ward differently, considering many women there will be post-surgical or dealing with other complications? I guess that's my question really.

I did a placement on a post surgical ward (vascular surgery) which was staffed by adult nurses and hca's the hca's are there to make beds, wash and change patients that can't do it themselves, help toilet etc, the trainee nurses usually helped them and did observations and blood pressure, temperature, pulses . Trainee mw do obs on maternity wards. Some wards train there hca's to do obs. Realy hca's should help people to dress etc on maternity wards if they are struggling ( after cs etc) but haven't seen them do it! I was discharged by a hca after my third child so they can be trained to admit and discharge patients freeing up the midwives

So basically post surgical wards are staffed the same

Surgical ward -nurses (adult branch) and hca's

Maternity ward - nurses ( midwifery branch) and hc's

Ah okay, thank you!!

I think people get confused because they are called mw not nurses, they do the same amount of years training as other branches through the same school ( school of nursing and midwifery) they do all their training in maternity units, an adult nurse might spend for weeks on a maternity ward or they might not have a placement at all in maternity

I have experience of 2.

One is the big main city hospital and the other is the local Midwife unit. The big hospital was prettg good. I definitely never had any complaints. It was busy and there was a lot going on but the care was always ok! I am lucky that I never had any issues or problems and was always fairly confident with what I was doing so perhaps that helped. I know some people have been less than impressed with it.

The local midwife unit was absolutely first class. Just amazing! The entire stay just left me feeling relaxed, positive and very happy. Wonderful place!