Is it unreasonable to expect help from the health visitors?

[jollier12]

I was visited by my health visitor soon after Jack arrived and she banged on about BREAST FEEDING! I get it! I'm doing it! No we don't have any problems at the moment! Oh well then que HV to start a 2 hour pontification on breast feeding! Waste of time. She also strangely mentioned erectile dysfunction but by that point I had well and truly switched off. I don't even know how or why!

3 month's down the line and after he's had antibiotics we get the dreaded THRUSH, in his mouth, on me nips, hell on earth.

Seen the GP given Clortromizole 1% for me and Nystatin for him. No better after a week. Boy screaming and not feeding, nipples on fire, no sleep and GP's don't have any appointments available.

Soooooo in my desperation I contact the HV.

They'll phone me back, the HV phones me back with get this..... Look on the internet. WTF? After asking for help and being told to chuffing google it I was a bit peeved. Is that really all they can do?

Needless to say I had to slap myself out of the despair and lock horns with the GP's to get an emergency appointment.

Oh they did by the way phone me to fill in an audit on what the HV covered RE breast feeding. Box ticked then!

But if you do have any problems further down the line, you know after the audits done and your paperwork filed your on your own.

We have never met out HV.

Not once! My son is 14 months now.

The initial discharge from the midwife was with a temp cover as our HV wasn't available.

After that I tried to contact twice. No answer on the phone. Then after that the phone number no longer worked.

It concerns me greatly that there is apparently a massive loophole in child protection in our area.

Mine were both daft and I was polite to them but never took them seriously. It's like some kind of make work job

I don't understand why they're called visitors when they don't visit you? Round here you have to go into clinics on certain days to see them.

Cheers guys, I'm not on my own then with the HV role confusion!

I was surprised that they weren't a bit more concerned as Jack was pre-term. I demanded a GP appointment in the end and was seen that day, the receptionist said I couldn't be seen as she didn't have 2 emergency appointments together, I told her bollocks!

When I trained as a nurse we went out with the HV's and I quite liked it, that was 10 years ago and in a different area tho. I know it's all safeguarding nowerdays but they could just be straight and say at the outset "we're not bothered unless yor beating your child".

It's "Cue" not "que"