To think that some women have an awful time on the postnatal ward

[elliejjtiny]

This isn't a slag off the midwives thread. In my case the midwives were perfectly lovely and kind, just very overworked.

My 2 experiences on the postnatal ward with DS4 (now 18m) and DS5 (now 6m) were horrible. I had caesareans both times and both babies were in NICU, although DS5 came and joined me on the ward for the last 3 days. Once my catheter was out I had to make my own breakfast, fetch other meals and drinks from the ward kitchen, take expressed milk down what felt like endless corridors to NICU every 4 hours and sterilize all the bottles, pump bits etc. I didn't have DH with me as he was looking after the DC's or any visitors who stayed more than 5 minutes. I could have really done with some tlc in my vulnerable and hormonal state. And some decent painkillers. I wasn't allowed morphine after the catheter came out because it made me wobbly, just paracetamol and ibubrofen. I take more than that for period pains.

But when I talk about it I get told that it didn't happen or that I'm being negative or exaggerating. It makes me feel like I'm going mad. So come and tell me your awful postnatal ward stories so that I know I'm not alone.

Oh I also got told off by a cleaner who accused me of stealing electricity when I charged my phone.
This was as I wept to my mother after finding the baby had a cleft.
We were moved to the children's icu and I sat by her bed day and night.
I had nothing to eat apart from cons food dh brought each day as there was no kitchen and they only fed mothers who were breastfeeding.
I have had a mastectomy so no choice and being only 4 days post c section could hardly walk to the shops.

Hated my 2 experiences on the postnatal wards after 2 emcs too. It's strange, because my antenatal midwives were all lovely, as were the ones on delivery suite, then again for community care when you get home.

But on the wards I was in so much pain, just agony getting out of bed every time the baby cried (which was a lot!). That, combined with the sleep deprivation makes for a hellish experience after a couple of days, and you'd think that the midwives would be very mindful of what you've just been through and try to look after you.

Yes, some of it is surely down to short staffing. But some of the midwives were unkind and impatient, and at night especially I saw them several times standing around chatting and laughing about telly, seemingly too busy to help go to the fridge to get stored milk for me and save me having to walk there in agony. The HCAs nearly all seemed kind and caring though.

I wonder if it's the case that midwives on postnatal just see so many women having just been through labour and birth that they are just desensitised by it, and take a rather blasé attitude as a result?

What a horrific experience, ledkr:( Was it in the uk?

I had a straight forward delivery with dd2 but lost a bit of blood so had to stay in. The staff were grand, the facilities good and clean, but the mere fact of being on a ward with three other women and having a baby who did not want to sleep was just massively stressful and I didn't sleep at all. I really just wanted someone to take her away for a couple of hours and let me sleep - dh would have done that at home.

Two years later and I still feel I haven't caught up.

Even when it's done well, I think pn wards are not good places for new mums!

I got accused of smoking in the private room. I can't even lift a drink to my lips let alone a fag. Plus I didn't smoke at that time.

I feel genuinely sorry for all of you on here that have had these horrible experiences... seriously, it is very sad reading some of these posts. I hope you all got the help you needed after callous treatment at such a vulnerable time of your lives :(

I was very lucky and consider my postnatal care very good from when I had DS. My mother insists my birthing room was 'filthy' but the ward was understaffed and packed to the brim with new mums, and after a 20 hour labour of course my room was a bit messy! I didn't blame the midwives at all. They did the best they could and did the most important part - got my son out of me safely. I was going to be moved onto the main ward eventually any way, so it didn't really matter that the room needed cleaning as I was only going to be there for an hour or so.

I only had one negative point to make though. I had an epidural and it made me walk a bit funny when I was getting the feeling back in my lower half - so to make my baby stuff more accessible, I cuddled DS in my bed with me bfing on and off, and put my (brand new spotlessly clean) change bag/holdall in the clear cots they give you, and pulled it next to me. A midwife (not the one I'd had during labour) came in and snapped at me 'that's not exactly the cleanest thing to put in a cot, is it?' as if I was smearing poo over the baby's head or something! So I told her it was brand new and I couldn't put it on the floor as I couldn't reach it to get nappies etc out as I was still half numbed. And she genuinely tutted and went 'I KNOW'. Wtf lol don't fucking say anything then!!

Anyone else just made me chuckle if they did or said something a bit off as it takes quite a lot to really irk me (and tends to be more in the tone that I take offence opposed to the comment itself). Like the pediatrician came onto the ward to do my baby's first checks, tried to listen to his heart with a cold stethoscope, and asked me - 'can you please stop him from crying as I cant hear his heart.' She'd literally told me I couldn't hold him or bf him as she did the checks one minute before! What did she expect me to do?! Just ask my ds to reasonably quiet down?!

My son was taken to SCBU whilst I was being stitched up in theatre. I was taken up to see him in a wheelchair and then got to the ward about 3am. I woke up around 7 and wanted to go and see him but I was still attached to a drip. I rang the bell and a midwife came, flung back the curtain, looked around and barked "did you lose your baby?".

Sheesh. She was horrible and if I saw again I'd let her know but at the time I just wanted to sit by my son's crib in SCBU so I let her get away with it. She lied about not giving me all my medication as well, and sId I must have been confused.

The rest of the care was inept rather than nasty - I wasn't at my bed much so I missed physiotherapy, medication, etc. My discharge papers were left on my bed because I wasn't there. No one told me what was going on with my care and recovery. Oh, and no one removed my catheter, so I had to shlep up and down the corridor to SCBU dragging a bag of my own piss. I cried a lot and they thought I had PND, but as soon as I got me and my baby out of there I was sooooo happy!

Yes summer it was.
My sister is a Neo natal nurse and said the hospital called a big meeting and everyone was crapping themselves.

I still wish I'd made a formal complaint tbh.

Iomega - filthy does matter. I am one of many mothers who develop an infection post birth. It took months and further surgery to recover from that. Filthy contributes to infection risk (obviously you can't actually tell the precise cause of individual infections).

This thread is very worrying and upsetting!

My bad experience started in labour - as stuck at 2cm no pain relief for me, even back to back with waters broken.
Finally pethidine and induction
Epidural
High temp-> infection but they couldnt get a vein for ABs luckily i was 10cm so ventuose (failed) and forceps and oral ABs for both of us.
Consequences
Jaundice and a like 4 days stay on ward.
Mainly you dont realise that they wont tell you about taking the meds as in come to give you them without a reminder same for baby.
The light didnt work so couldnt have the curtain closed.

Yes the other babies crying but so was mine as i couldnt wind and she was constantly feeding. Arrived on ward at about 10pm so no time to get used to it. Not told to fill in lunch menu.
I think its a bit silly to stick a first time mum on a ward at night with a probably crying baby and no experience.
I agree the canulas in mine and babies hands so painful (and bleeding)
Mainly mws ok but yes not overly helpful.
They dont bother showing you how to do anything really so not surprising about the bathing.
You finally get to sleep after bf all night and get woken up by 'breakfast'.
It was only the breakfast we had to do for ourselves.
I was in longer than any of the CS mums waiting hrs yes you can / no you cant go. I can see why people are put off bf as it seens to mean you are kept in longer

The women who dropped the baby, well you are usually told not to have them in the bed but my god thats awful you couldnt get anyone to come to the bell.

I think pregnant women should be told - say no if you really dont feel well enough to get up, better than fainting etc.

Without wanting to be crude there weren't freshly used forceps or uterine fluids all over the place, Pico. It was just untidy (like they forgot to throw the packet away from my hand IV and left a bin liner of rubbish on the floor), I wasnt laying in my own mess, certainly not enough to cause an infection! I tore and got cut, they stitched me up in the same room and I didn't get any sort of complication with my stitches or womb afterwards...I honestly think my mum over reacted...she used to be a matron so her standards are fricking high for any hospital wards!

I feel like I had a lucky experience - ten years ago, was mobile after a straightforward delivery, clean rooms, clean bathrooms. I just had a whiff of this experience in the Observation Area after birth - I had to go there due to a spinal block for stitching. The midwives were just brusque, unsmiling and - not actively unpleasant - but spoke to me like nobody has ever spoken to me before or since. 'He can sense you find it uncomfortable and that's why the milk won't come' said the first one, watching me from the end of the bed, having appeared without preamble, and then disappeared again. Another came along a few hours later to try that well-known baby/tit squash together method, again without saying anything else or even a 'hello'. Fair enough not to chat in the middle of the night, but a bit of eye contact or even a smile goes a long, long way.

I've known a lot of nurses and I'd be amazed if there is an exact crossover between postnatal shittiness and being a direct-entry midwife. Some people are just not very nice and have little empathy; also, as the 20th century shows us, if placed in impossible situations (two midwives per ward, wtf?) people start doing impossible things.

This is a very worrying thread I agree.
Should we be doing something do you think?
Ds and his gf have just had their 1st and said the care was very unpredictable.
Dil was told by a mw. If you can't get it right today u shouldn't be breast feeding at all!
She's a very nervous and shy girl, I almost cried as I left her in hospital the first night.

I had an awful time during my stay, it was only 3 months ago. I still think about it every day and I have hoped I will get over it and not care anymore one day but reading these posts doesn't make me very hopeful.
They were so judgmental and rude toward me when I was struggling to breastfeed and made me feel a total failure. Some of their breastfeeding advice was just plain wrong. They were very dismissive when I pointed out his tongue tie and the paed said DS didn't have one (later a tt specialist spotted it straight away, snipped it and DS fed like a champ ever since).
I also had the standard no change of bedding despite me bleeding through pads very quickly and getting blood on the bed. No one noticed my big episiotomy getting infected (this was only noticed after I left). Bounty were let in to me when I had put in my notes that I did not want to be approached by them.
All of the dramatic stuff like lying in a bloody bed sounds the worst, but actually it was definitely the breastfeeding judgements. No one should be made to feel like they are letting their baby down when they are only a few days post partum, especially by people who are supposed to be especially mindful of PND. Ironically the only time I have ever come close to giving up BFing was in the postnatal ward.

I had the Jekyll and Hyde midwives as well - had DS by EMCS after my blood pressure suddenly shot up three days before my due date and DS started showing signs of distress. He was left with me and I had to point out to the midwives on duty that hitching breath and shivering are not normal in newborns, after which he was whisked off to NNU at 4am. I spent the rest of the night alone with no idea if he was alright or not, and had to beg the following morning, lunchtime and afternoon for someone to decatheterise me so I could go and see him. Finally one of the midwives told me she'd been to check and he was more or less okay and would be back with me soon enough. So it was a bit of a nasty shock when I finally managed to totter along to NNU to see what the holdup was to find him in a high dependency incubator wired up to so many machines I couldn't hold him. Over the next 4 days I didn't sleep, barely ate as the nurses kept telling me I had to be at my bed for ward rounds and I ended up missing mealtimes (DH was an absolute lifesaver), and was literally chased round the hospital by trainee nurses taking unending blood pressure readings and wondering why they were still high. The NNU nurses were amazing, the staff in the postnatal ward were, on the whole, somewhere between useless and evil. I left hospital positive that I was doing a useless job of trying to breastfeed, utterly exhausted and in a lot of pain - but so bloody happy to be going home that it honestly felt like I had been released from some form of punishment.

about the woman who dropped the baby she said (though I didnt witness this) that a HCA came and put the baby in bed with her after she buzzed for help to get him (just had c section) so that she wouldn't have to do it again as she wanted to go to the party. The baby was ok.

most of the midwives and HCA I encountered were apparently agency bank staff as it was between Christmas and new year. I did wonder if there were cultural reason for their callousness. But irrespective of the stropiness of the skeleton crew they'd left around, the hospital administrators were taking an enormous risk I have always felt as I could literally have walked out with every baby on the ward (no one stopped me actually crow barring the locked cupboards or taking my baby down to the main entrance to get food from the vending machine).

please don't let my experience scare any people about to have their first babies - I really think I was unlucky because of the time of year as, if any PN ward was routinely like this it would surely be shut down?

Have read less than half of the posts and can't read anymore as I'm starting to cry remembering how helpless I felt in hospital after having DS over a year ago.

I had a supposedly straightforward birth and recovered well (physically) but still feel completely traumatised by my experience. I also had absolutely lovely midwives on the whole, and even the Bounty lady wasn't too offensive(!)....but it was still completely awful and depressing. Had to stay in hospital for a week as DS was jaundiced and can feel myself crumbling and dying a bit at the memory.

At least we have MN eh....as I found no one talks about this in real life.

Yanbu, I had no help after having my ds by elce 8 years ago.

I was left to my own devices to sort out my catheter, I covered both of us with blood when I pulled my drip out to change his nappy after 45 minutes if ringing the bell for help. I was 7 hours post natal at that point and alone. I had to become mobile and care for him and myself the moment the epidural wore off, despite being attached to a drip and catheritised.

The care I received after my two cs was fine but I found the expectation that you know what to do etc very odd they didn't even tell me where the toilets were, what timw meals were, where to get them etc. A simple laminated sheet of paper with would have helped! I also got lots of help from the other women on the ward when I couldn't move about much.

One thing I found very strange was that people kept walking off with my baby (ds2) I'd go to the loo and when I returned, he'd be missing from his cot. I'd then have to go looking for him or listen out for his crying. The midwife would have taken him to their desk or somewhere.

Ds2 had no illness or abnormality at all and I didn't have any psychiatric illness or behaviour which may have been deemed risky. I used to have to suppress my feelings of panic at finding him gone

Some sound like quite traumatic stories. I wonder what happens when a woman's baby is born dead, and they put her on a ward with all the live babies? Do the MWs give a shit?

I was kept in for 5 days and my treatment and care depended entirely on which midwife was supervising the shift. I completely agree that the post natal midwives are completely understaffed and over worked but some work harder and are a lot more caring than others. One shift led by a lovely midwife called Catherine was amazing to a woman. They never stopped and nothing was too much trouble from a cuddle to breast feeding support. The other shift took their lead from their supervisor who never moved from the office and did the bare minimum. My ward was right next to the office and she played on her mobile or ate crisps for a whole shift once. I couldn't get out of bed one night as I had a terrible reaction to medication, I'd rang my buzzer and waited 20 minutes before using my mobile to call the ward and asked her to come help. I did complain and all the other midwives who worked their butts off all knew but could do nothing.

Hidden we had to take baby in cot to loo with us for safety reasons.
I suppose the increase in CS and birth rate is probably not helping but xmas is not an excuse as they are there to work not party.
But the birth rate will continue so they need to make some changes.
I agree an important info sheet would be great.

One Mw told me if I couldn't bf I would be in longer til I could. I told her to get some formula and a bottle so I could get the hell out of there. Funny how my difficulties with bf, endless sobbing and general misery went as soon as I left. I bf by the way. She stormed off telling me I wasn't trying hard enough. She had never actually bf herself so I have no idea why she considered herself such an expert.

I also had my newborn removed. He was crying to be fed. I couldn't move as paralysed from the cs and stuck in bed. I rang the bell for 30 mins whilst listening to screaming baby. Suddenly a blond woman appeared, picked up my ds and left. Without a word. It was the middle of the night

I screamed and screamed. Another woman got up from her bed and came behind my curtain. She went looking for my baby. I screamed and pressed the button endlessly. In the end, after about 30 mins the blond woman came back with ds. " here's your baby you silly woman. We are v busy"

Me- " I thought you'd stolen him" ( sobbing) and the other woman who had helped and had just had a baby herself, trying to find tissues

MW - " I wouldn't steal your baby. You are deranged if you think I want your baby" and left.

Fuck me, it was 7 years ago and I still remember her sneering face as she almost threw a hysterical 1 day old baby at me and left. You try pulling yorself up when paralysed from the waist down, agony from the cs, clutching a hyperventilating baby. And then bf. Good luck with that.