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

Oh, to expand on the shower yuckiness, when I went in for my 2nd child, there was a wet room style shower room, and someone had passed a blood clot the size of a t-bone steak (well not quite but it was pretty big) and it was just laying there on the floor.

The next day it was still there, and had all dried up ewwwwwwwwwwwww

Was moved to a post natal ward after complications after having dd1 had been in a private room before that. Was bloody horrible, dirty, midwives unpleasant, shower room was minging, I couldn't wait to go home.

Thankfully when I had dd1 I was in a MLU and the difference was incredible. Stayed in the same room I delivered her in, en suite bathroom was lovely and clean. Apart from one midwife with an attitude just after I'd given birth it was a wonderful experience. And I got to go home the next day.

IF! I was ever to have another I think I'd try and go for a home birth.

Oh yeah first time round I had to beg for pain relief. I was offered "paracetamol" on the night of my c-section. After getting my husband to read my notes and work out what had been prescribed by a doctor (there was a prescription section bit) he worked out I was entitled to morphine and set about the place making a nuisance of himself they gave me some (and then no doubt themselves, after having to deal with an irate DH, they'd need it)

There were some nice things. The Bounty lady was really nice. There was a vending machine with mars bars that spat out more change than you put in so you got paid to eat free mars bars

The blankets for the cribs smelled really nice - I don't know what they washed them with but it was nice and if I were to smell one now, I think all the feelings of having a gorgeous newborn would come flooding back

It wasn't postnatal but my anaethetist was really really nice and reassuring

nightmare, lots of the same things as others, tiny quantities of inedibel food, bloody showers, rude and patronsing staff, refusal to pick up baby for you aftre cs. i was told

" bf babies don't need fed for the first 24 hours"

wish i has asked her how the baby knew he was a bf baby

i was refused water ( post section) " you shoudln't be thirsty, you are on a drip" ( I'd had nothing to eat or drink for 9 hours befroe the op and no drip)

i was shouted at for having a low output of urine ( the drip had stopped and they woudln't give me water)

i asked them to turn lay the baby in the crib so i could see his face - they refused. they knew i was asking as had lost another child to cot death

they didn't give me a fresh pad for 12 hours after the op. they woudlnt let me get out of bed as i still had the cathereter in and they were waiting for the day shift to remove it. i was sitting in a pool of blood with blood all over the thin cellular blanket and visitors were coming into the ward staring at me covered in blood

i asked them to help me and the nurse shouted at me from the middle of the ward and walked away

i have never met so many hard faced cows as i did on that ward

you will be surprised to learn that i went home less than 24 hours aftre coming out of theatre.

after my last c section the ward i was on was lovely, the staff were very busy but did take time to see to my needs, the shower was clean and right opposite my bed, food wasn't the best but was edible and nutritional. The only complant i had was i couldn't get my overhead light to turn off, next time i will take an eye mask just in case.

Ds1 was born in a newly opened London Hospital. The birth was long and horrific. Nasty bullying Dr used forceps without any anesthetic and then wouldn't let me sit up slightly to be sick while he was stitching. I thought I was going to drown in my own vomit. The room was covered in (my) blood, walls, ceiling, everywhere. The MW gave me a sick bowl which was full of blood to be sick into. I told them that I seemed to have lot a lot of blood but they said no I hadn't. 3 days later I needed a massive blood transfusion.

The care in the PN ward was minimal. I was there 4 days and on two of them no MW or other medical staff member spoke to me at all. I had to have the blood transfusion before I went home so a junior dr came in the middle of the night and I heard him say to a MW, 'where is this bloody woman then?'.

It was reasonably clean but I missed loads of meals. 2 days after discharge I wa admitted to another hospital as I had a massive infection in my forceps tear. In that hospital a MW shouted at me for breast feeding as she said 'that baby isn't breast fed!' WTF?!!!

I can't bear to describe all the other stuff here as even although DS1 is now 18 I can feel myself getting really upset just thinking about it. I actually phoned all my friends from the hospital ward to tell them never to have children as it was so traumatic.

Ds2 was born 6 years ago in a Glasgow hospital by ECS. It was okay. Staff were pretty nice and helpful if a bit overworked.

I've just spent time in a medical ward in hospital and actually I think its the whole inpatient NHS thng that needs overhauled. I experienced and witnessed nasty horrible bullying of patients by staff. Truly horrific :(

Why are you asking OP? Are you due to give birth? I am and I'm glad that I've already been in hospital a few times otherwise some of these posts would scare the crap out of me. Think from what I've seen of our hospital postnatal ward it is clean, not too loud, has pretty good staff doing their best and whilst food is dire and it's rough around the edges, it seems good compared to most on here . Awful that people have had such bad experiences but not good to read them at this stage of pregnancy. Bit fed up of pregnancy horror stories!

Sorry Op ..should have read your post again before I posted. Yes so 3 weeks to go. Similar to me but think I'm going to be early. If it's any consolation, I heard awful things about our local hospital based on people's experiences a few years ago but can't say I've seen anything bad there when I've been admitted recently. Apart from the food ;)

Such sad stories.

I have no experience of being admitted to hospital other than with my DD when a week old, merely admitted for weight loss.

You've all had horrificc experiences and there's so much the NHS can do better.

However, I would ask if this treatment is solely confined to post-natal wards or if other hospital stays are equally as bad?

I understand that hormones and the experience of just giving birth can heighten our reactions to the situation around us but can just one section of NHS care be so bad? Surely there must be problems throughout the system?

I was on the ward for 3 days.
During the day - quite good, all the breastfeeding help I could wish for (because no-one else on the ward was interested), paed visits, and the food was actually quite good except that you weren't allowed toast for breakfast, just bread with butter and jam, and cereal. Took 36 hours to get my prescribed painkillers though, after screaming WHY DOES EVERYONE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT MY VAGINA? MY VAGINA IS JUST FINE NOW GET ME MEDS FOR MY PELVIS!!!

At night - there was no care. I had nightmares for months and wrote a complaint letter twice - turned out the head of postnatal care had quit and took months to find another one. Eventually got a standard fobbing-off letter.

However, I don't know of any hospital that doesn't have crap postnatal care, so I'm going there again and just praying this time I can give birth and then bugger off home without darkening the doors of the postnatal ward at all.
Just had my booking appt where the MW asked what I thought of postnatal care there.
I asked her if she thought that leaving someone immobile attached to a drip lying in piles of diarrhoea for four hours was acceptable. And then getting told off by a MW who shouted abuse and slammed the door on us.
Finally, I got the answer I was hoping for: No. That is wrong. I am very sorry that happened to you. I hope it will never happen to anyone again.

The care assistants, when they were finally sent to me, were wonderful and encouraging - just hugely overworked.

Bloody awful I think it gave me a really bad start to motherhood, hence why DD was born at home. There was no way I wanted to go back to hospital.

i went straight into delivery and got discharged home from delivery =) no stinky wards for this mumma (just a prem baby and 14 weeks of my baby being in doh)

Princess Anne Southampton

Understaffed with poor communication between staff which was a bit surprising as the handovers went on for a couple of hours and interupting them to get help was a definite no-no. God knows what they talked about but it couldn't have been the health of the patients as they didn't have enough contact to know how their patients were.

I had 2.5 days on there and no-one explained the routines especially about breakfast only being brought to you once after delivery - after that you had to get it yourself but no-one told you where to go for it. There were 3 of us on our section of the ward, a lovely Chinese couple who were working their way through a stack of parenting manuals whilst their baby got over jaundice and an Asian lady who had loads of children visiting (not all her own) and insisted on the curtains being around her bed all the time. Every time a member of staff passed they would open the curtains again - didn't check on how any of us were doing, just moved opened the curtains and disappeared again.

On the last day we were supposed to be getting some advice but had to hang around all day to get it and then we just left as there didn't appear to be any procedure for departure. This wasn't any great surprise as having been in there 4 days between induction and emcs it was quite clear that there was so few obs being done that you could easily have delivered the baby yourself and left and the staff wouldn't have noticed.

Complained afterwards and offered some ideas of how to improve services but they were completely uninterested once they had determined that you weren't going to sue them.

Gallicgirl, I don't think it is restricted to post natal wards. The worst hospital stay I have ever had was in Charing Cross on the cancer ward, I have never seen such an appalling level of neglect and lack of care. The ward was filthy, the staff were either overworked, abusive or nonexistent (at night for example). Twice during my stay of 3 weeks, family members had to find food and take it round to patients as meals didn't arrive. I caught a D+V bug whilst there and had to be kept on a quarantine ward, it was fucking horrific, I ended up cleaning the toilet myself, and taking old ladies to the toilet because staff weren't answering buzzers. It was hard to believe that this was a ward for people suffering cancer.

I have to add, that despite having had some horrible experiences in NHS hospitals, i have also received some amazing care, and met wonderful people. It just seems as though when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong, and that is often at a time when you are at your most vulnerable.

Both experiences fine.
#1 1999. Straight forward labour and birth - epidural. They were in no hurry to get rid of me and I was keen to get BF established so I stayed for 4 days. They looked after me and I looked after DS and had lots of lovely visitors and very fond memories of creeping to the nursery with DS to BF during the wee hours.

#2 2009. Very easy labour and birth. Moved to side room (no room on the ward..yay!) at midnight. Great nights sleep, only aware of mw popping in now and again to check. Co-slept with DS2. Left the next day after all checks were done. I could even open the window!

I was fortunate to not have bad associations with hospitals at the time.

This was The Rosie at Addenbrookes.

I also had my baby at Princess Anne hospital in Southampton.

I found post natal care to be quite good. I was in for a week after emcs. Perhaps the OraMorph clouded my judgement! Food was...what was it?

Labour ward however...

first baby - postnatal ward was fine had one particualr midwife who seemed to take me under her wing, I was 20 but looked alot younger and had no family etc so no visitors. I remember staggering back from the toilet in the middle of the night and she just ran up behind me and held my hand for a while which sort of stayed with me. Ward itself was basic but comfortable enough. Spent 1 night actually i think given my personal circumstances at the time another night would have been a huge benefit to me.

Second and third babies (ended up in the same postnatal ward) ward was busy and noisy but the midwives were around if needed (when my baby was grunting etc they appeared from nowhere as if by magic) again ward was basic but comfortable these two babies were early (35 and 36 weeks) and so i was in for a few days while they just kept an eye etc - wasnt unpleasant in fact i have fond memories of lying in the little bed snuggling my baby listening to the world go by at night.

Fourth baby - this time in a brand new purpose built maternity unit. The room was frankly luxurious, there are no wards only single rooms, each room and laminate floors, nice bed armchair etc and each room has its own toilet and wet room. BUT I have never been so lonely or afraid in my life. There was NOTHING to keep you occupied apart from staring at your baby (shes pretty but i was in 5 days because of high blood pressure i was ready to kill by the end). I think it would have been fine if i had felt ill at all but i had had a quick easy birth and even though my blood pressure was high etc i felt fine, by day 5 i was barely even bleeding it was like a prison. I saw someone maybe once a day if that after the first 24 hours and there wasnt even a phone to use - mobile signal was awful you couldnt connect at all so I couldnt contact the outside world unless i left the ward (and you cant take the baby because of all the tags) to use the phone in reception.

I have have baby 5 next year which will be in the brand new hospital - but to be honest if i could go back to the basic loud ward where you actually saw people i would.

Mostly wonderful. Same midwife all the way through delivery. Got brought tea and toast in the immediate aftermath and then left to fawn over new infant for a while.
Was then asked if I wanted a bath or a shower, and did I want to be left alone or for someone to stay. I chose a bath - it was run for me and I wasn't taken there until it was ready. I was helped to undress, then given a cord to pull when I needed to get out. Pulled it and someone turned up to help me dry off and get changed. MWs in the main very good - one or two less so. One in particular (a man - the only male on the ward) was wonderful - even brought me a cup of tea and biscuits at 5am when my baby was screaming and I couldn't get her to quieten. He also sat for a chat until he could see that I was less stressed by her crying.
Food not great. Issue with visitors to the woman opposite, who turned up in vast hoards and didn't stick to visiting hours which I found a bit intimidating when sitting struggling with infant who didn't latch on properly (which meant I was being manhandled by various staff members and had a lot on show). But aside from that, I think, had my dh not made noises about us coming home, I would be there still!

Not too bad at all really.

I asked for my own room on my birth plans, and got one both times (not sure if there was medical need, or if I was just lucky).

First time, I shared a 'jack and jill' bathroom with the room next door.
Second time, the bathroom was half way down the corridor.

The rooms were too hot and stuffy (I really, really hate sleeping on plastic sheets too - makes me so hot and uncomfortable).

The MWs were great, food was fine (basic but enough to keep me ticking over along with the stash of snacks my visitors left me).

I didn't like being continually disturbed for OBs/breakfast/medicine/OBs/ear check/photo lady/OBs/Bounty lady etc.etc. made it hard to catch up with sleep.

I've been in hospital a lot in recent years and know that you need to
a) take responsibility for your own medicines and treatment - make sure you understand what you need to take and when, and chase it up if it doesn't appear. If the Dr says you can go home this afternoon - then tell everyone, including the MWs at every chance - otherwise you may be forgotten.
b) get your visitors working for you - get them to bring in snacks, cartons of juice, clean nighties etc. Ask them to refill your water jug for you. Get them to mind the baby while you go for a shower (or just a visit to the toilet).
c) some of the people who wander past and make comments about your baby's health/looks/BFing are not medically qualified. Just because they wear a uniform, doesn't mean they know about jaundice - in my case she turned out to be a cleaner . Ignore them, and if in doubt ask them who they are.

You have a point, I was in an EPAS wrd after my second mc. They suspected an ectopic so admitted me. To have meals you went to the day room. I was in a 2 bed room as the other rooms were full, noone was in the other bed. They gave me painkillers and those plus the shock I conked out and slept through dinner, woke in the early hours fell asleep again and was woken by the domestic coming in in the morning and saying 'oh hen you are missing breakfast'. I went along and the MW said oh they said you had missed dinner last night we wondered where you were. Turns out not one member of staff had looked in on me in all that time.

What freaked me out was not missing meals but that I was an expected ectopic who hadn't been seen for 18hrs I could have bled out in that time. I know its not their job to chase me up for meals but I would have expected someone to check I was actually still alive, otherwise what exactly was the point of admitting me I may as well have been at home.

I LOVE COLCHESTER GENERAL

Honestly, I do. With the exception of one midwife who was more school teacher than midwife the staff and the quality of care were exceptional.

From the lady who gave me a bed bath up to the surgeon who performed my C Section they couldn't have been nicer or more caring. A true credit to the NHS.

Will be back shortly for CSection the second. Hopefully my experience will be the same.

The food was dire but hey, this isn't a hotel and I was not paying. Not directly anyhow......