About partners on the ward after childbirth?

[hullabaloo234]

Booked in for ELCS for breech baby.

Just going through this week's post and find a letter from the hospital about what to do/not do prior to the op, what time to arrive etc.

At the back is a letter for my "support person", with a list of do's and don'ts for their stay on the ward with me after my section.

Sorry, WTF?! I love DP dearly but not a chance do I want him or more importantly a load of other blokes on the ward.

I was already going to discharge myself the following morning but was realistic about staying a bit longer if needed- bollocks to that I am definitely leaving as soon as my catheter is out and I can walk again!

Am I the only person who thinks this is really bloody unreasonable?!

Yes but 'should' doesn't really solve anything. There wasn't.

Yes, in an ideal world everyone would have a private room. But this is the NHS and quite honestly pigs will sooner fly. One of the main issues with private rooms is that they require far more staff as you can't be seen therefore they have to check on you more often. So assuming private rooms are not going to be an option for the vast majority of women, I can't see that the default situation should be anything other than a compromise - partners can stay for 12 hours of the day and women get to hang out man free for 12 hours of the day/night.

Making (some) women suffer 24hrs of vulnerability, lack of privacy and stress is clearly worse than only having to deal with it for 12 hours.

The thing about this is that there's no possibility of both options being possible in curtained bay wards. Private rooms with en suite is the only situation where it's ok for partners to stay.

Again no one is advocating partners never visiting, just that there should be a limit to how long they're there for. Being there for 24 hours is completely unnecessary and imposes on patient time and comfort

Yes but men aren't just 'visitors'.

Of course they are. I'll say it again, postnatal wards aren't bonding centres, the NHS takes care of patients not their visitors, and they should always come first.

The no staying over night is what lead me to homebirth with dc2 and with dc3 refuse to set foot into the hospital unless I could have a 2 hour discharge.

With dc1 I was dumped on an empty ward with my dh kicked out after a few hours with a baby who couldn't feed and Midwife's that just kept saying do skin to skin. No amount of skin to skin was going to fix dc's major tongue tie. In tears at 2am to dh saying I was going to discharge myself and dc as it was so horrible, until he rang my mum and she ripped the Midwife's heads off. Never did get to bf in the end as the only way for discharge was once they new he had eaten well do I gave him bottle to get us out of that hell hole.

some men systematically abuse and attack. Not men. So do some women.

I have been sexually assaulted. A long time ago, I was young. Naive. Perhaps I still am. But I do not tar every man I have come into contact with since then as a potential abuser. I wouldn't have fallen in love and had 4 children otherwise.

I think it's is hugely unfair to pin the label of abuser to the vast majority of men with no basis in fact. Which is what I feel some women who want no men on wards are doing.

Where do you draw the line? No male maternity workers? My consultant when pregnant with twins was male. I had dealings with male sonographers, male nurses. The only difference between them and the man with his partner in the next bed is medical training. Both are there for that woman in that moment.

TBH dh was so wrapped up in what I and our newborn children were doing that he barely noticed what else was going on in the ward. We were his concern, his priority.

But I accept my views are not those of others. It's just an opinion.

Men are just visitors.

Where do you draw the line? No male maternity workers? My consultant when pregnant with twins was male. I had dealings with male sonographers, male nurses. The only difference between them and the man with his partner in the next bed is medical training

Not true. The male clinician will have been through a CRB check and will usually be unable to work in any of the professions you mention of they have a record for violent offences. In particular, they will not be able have any contact at all with a woman whom they have been convicted of attacking. Not a single one of these things is true for the man in the next bed.

Male hcps are dbs checked, and would lose their jobs if they behaved in an inappropriate way. Visitors are just a random cross section of society.

My dd was premature and in nicu, our visiting was 9-9 and there were times during my extended stay that I would have been very grateful if I could have had some extra time with Dh. A couple of nights we sat out in reception together for an extra hour because I didn't want to lie alone in a bed listening to other mothers with their babies when I couldn't be with mine.

Yes, that's very hard, but should not outweigh other womens' need for privacy and safety.

I'll concede to the dbs. But it is only as valid as the information available on the day it is done.

That still makes it of considerably more validity than not having one at all, and of course if a HCP receives a conviction after their DBS they're still likely to lose their job. It was a ridiculous claim to make.

Agreed, I don't know what the answer is. It's horrifying to hear these stories and women should be able to feel safe and supported. The problem is that some mothers need partners for support and others find having unknown men around makes them unsafe.

I guess ideally there would be more family rooms (not necessarily paid for because I would not be happy to have to pay just because my daughter was prem and unneeded extra support!) for those who needed extra support for any reason

YANBU at all, OP.
Personally, as both a former patient and a former HCP I favour restricted visiting hours, ie a couple of hours in the afternoon and 3-4 hours in the evening. That allows ample time for rounds and examinations to be conducted, and time for the patients to shower in privacy, eat their meals, and most importantly, to rest and recover.
It goes without saying that staffing levels should be adequate to care for the patients ie the women who have just given birth and their babies.
I've got to say, some of the care quoted on this thread is absolutely shocking. Some people don't deserve to be employed by the NHS. I thought internal rotation (of shifts) was supposed to address the problem of poorly motivated night staff. Not sure what happened there.

Even though I am one of the posters who have said I do not want to share a room overnight with visiting partners, I most certainly do not tar all men with the brush of being potential abusers.

When I am in good health I don't feel at all threatened by the presence of other people generally. When I'm post-labour I'm sure I will feel (and be) vulnerable. I do not view not wanting to be asleep in a room with up to five women you don't know plus their partners as believing that all men are a problem.

Why do they have single sex dormitories in youth hostels? Because many women don't feel safe sleeping in a room with men they don't know.

When I stay in a hotel, I lock the door. I do this because when I am asleep I am vulnerable to other people. I won't be aware of someone approaching. The time my sister forgot to lock her hotel-room door she woke up to find a man (a stranger) standing over her bed. Bloody terrifying.

When my brother was an inpatient on a Neurology ward he was in a mixed bay with three other beds. There was an extremely vulnerable female patient on that ward who, when she had the curtains open, had to put up with being stared at relentlessly by another male patient in the bed opposite her. When I was visiting this patient stared relentlessly at me. It felt irritating to me but must have felt threatening to the woman who wasn't in a fit state to defend herself. I have no doubt that the female patient should not have been in a mixed ward when she was unable to defend herself.

I think the only reasonable solution is for those women who feel they must have their partners there to be in side rooms.

As I'm single and will be on my own in the postnatal ward I don't really want to be put in a side room because there'll be no one around to see if I become too unwell to press the buzzer (and by the sounds of it the call button might be ineffectual anyway!)

and by the sounds of it the call button might be ineffectual anyway.
Yes, I feel this may be the root of the problem. When did answering the bells stop being part of the job? I worked an acute medical ward (never been a midwife) usually with high dependency patients and low staffing levels yet we always managed to answer the bells and respond in a professional manner.

Sorry, my last post wasn't meant to be a dig at all midwives/nursing staff. I'm sure the majority are hard working and do their best.

Tbh, even if staffing levels were so high that I had someone at my beck and call, its not my husband, and it's not the person I want by my side when I'm tired and emotional and in pain.

More private rooms, more privacy in central and a firmer attitude towards bad behaviour on wards could solve a lot of the issues. Also, women only wards, and separate ones where men are allowed, and where possible women can choose their preference.

Having a child is a joint commitment, he's not just a visitor.

Of course the other option (depending on breastfeeding etc), is that if baby is fine, baby could be discharged with dad and brought back again the next morning, which might actually allow mum some rest.

Similar situation to SpeakNoWords really. It was awful and I can't imagine him not being there.

However, I do funny understand that isn't the case for many many ladies but I had a private room.

We would have paid for maternity care but it wasn't available.

I had to stay 3 nights with an EMCS because I had a catheter after baby kicked my kidneys too hard. I didn't have the major pain either, 5 hours after it I could walk, albeit stiffly, across the room. Midwives really supportive all night (this was last year).

My local maternity department only has private en-suite rooms though. Thank god!!!

Men ARE "just visitors".

The baby could be discharged with dad?!

FFS.

Men are just visitors in a maternity ward. The maternity ward isn't there to facilitate father/child bonding, it's there to care for the person who just had another person removed from their body, whether by strenuously pushing something the size of a three story block of flats out their bajingo, or by having a serious, traumatic operation.

If you want your DH/DP with you, good for you, but you don't get to inflict him on the other women who are feeling the most vulnerable they'll ever feel. You have the choice to pay for a private room, but you're not the only person in that hospital at any given time. Your right to choose does not give you the right to take that choice away from other people.