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?!

Partners on the ward 24hrs sounds like a nightmare. Maybe a separate ward for women who hav had Csections &need help 24 hrs.

Carmen maybe they want to help their partners with the baby because nobody else will? My DH would have preferred not to stay; he did after seeing the state I was in after a night on the postnatal ward.

I think only a handful of posters have actually said they think dad should be able to stay just for bonding or so they don't miss out. The vast majority seem to have been people who have been through crappy births and know they need more help than the overstretched staff can offer

I am so glad I gave birth several years back before this madness of partners being allowed to stay came in. Yes, most men are nice - but round about 5% really are not nice at all - and I do not want men who want to swear at women, abuse their partners, shout about babies crying on wards with women who've just given birth. It's crazy to suggest this is a good idea. Though as Inertia points out, it's due to underfunding, and by the time the current government has finished with us, we probably won't have an NHS at all.

I am quite surprised that most most posters favour a no to partners staying.
I say this as im a midwife and i get numerous requests for partners to say. (Generally not allowed. Visiting is 12 hrs a day).

Haven't you read the thread?

Even if you haven't... it's pretty obvious that a lot of people would like their partners to stay. The issue is with everybody else's.

And my biggest issue of all is WHY?why do they want to stay and sleep in a chair aĺl night?havent they got other dc or pets to go home to?they have the next twenty yrs with the baby. Just go home!

Gosh, and you're a midwife you say?

Fair enough there are good reasons partners aren't generally allowed to stay. But surely you can understand why they would want to? Any empathy going on?

Yeah richard. I sort of get that.i think.
Well kind of. Except i dont get men wanting to stay. Who would want to sit in a chair all night instead of going to bed. Most women will be home next day or couple days max.
As for staying to help support as staff cant. Well i see minimal evidence of men actually doing this. Most i see do nothing but call every five min for help off staff

Just.....no. The thought fills me with horror. My experience on a postnatal ward with DC (now 13) was enough. I was a Forces wife and was by myself, my mum had broken her arm a couple of days before and couldn't be with me. I had no friends or family near.
DC was a forceps delivery and was unwell so we were in hospital for 10 days.
Visitors to postnatal seemed to all be men. They all chatted away in their own language and stared openly at me. I closed the curtains for privacy but sometimes a strange man would open them, I guess on purpose, usually while I was desperately trying to get DC to feed. On one occasion one of them said something to the others in another language and they all laughed. I felt vulnerable and afraid and did nothing but cry. I begged to be discharged and told the midwives how I felt but I was dismissed and was told it was the "baby blues" talking.
I had DD 18 months later and discharged myself from hospital the same day.....

Nobody's arguing that some women cannot look after their baby alone, especially after a particularly gruelling birth or C-section. But the people who should be providing care for babies and new mothers- both of whom are hospital in-patients - on a post-natal ward are properly qualified midwives/ neonatal nurses/ health professionals.

There are no other circumstances in which a hospital in-patient is not only left to manage their own care, they are also expected to meet all the needs of another patient without any support whatsoever. Even zoo animals get medical attention from vets and vet nurses if something goes wrong with a birth- are our new mothers really less deserving of post-partum medical support than a gazelle, or a warthog?

This ^^^

Yes bubbin ive lots of empathy.
However i dont get why men want to hang aroung on a womens ward when most ladies are in max of two days.
Those who are ill or baby is sick os totally different of course. Most arent. Childbirtg is a normal event
A lovely special one,but normal. Most women dont need looking after.

Carmen my DH did not want to stay, he was also exhausted and we moved house 2 weeks before baby was born so actually it would have been better all around if he was at home getting the house sorted out for us.

But given that no staff member could or would help me when I could walk, was bleeding and couldn't lift my DD I don't know what choice I was left with. If you had spent all night sitting bolt upright, bleeding heavily, in severe pain with a high fever and clutching your newborn whilst trying to feed them and not fall asleep with them what would you have done the next night? All I had was someone tell me off for staying in the chair and laughing when I explained that I was in too much pain to get into the bed.

Also Carmen many women staying overnight after having babies now have had either complicated instrumental or Caesarian deliveries. And birth in these circumstances is not a normal event. This is part of the problem with post natal care in my opinion.

As a medic I am generally very generous with pain relief- post operative pain relief helps patients mobilise and get back home faster. There seems to be great resistance to giving effective analgesia post c-section- despite the fact that there are many breastfeeding friendly options.

See thats not really accurate is it carmen as the 'most women who don't need looking after' are discharged immediately, leaving you with just the women who do need looking after. On other wards in similar circumstances those women would be given much better medical care. Would a woman having similar abdominal surgery to a cs in other circumstances be expected to discharge home after 24hrs?

Rinceoir
I dont l lnow what happened to you, but if you were unwell and in HDU thats completely different. Im talking about normal deliveries or straightfoward cs. Partners should not stay.

We would always give all analgesla thats prescribed! Id never leave someone in pain.
However this thread is about partners staying on a maternity ward. And i generally do not agree with it. Most women arent sick. People are just treating having a baby as an ilness. Mostly it is ok.
Those who have difficult and i mean really traumatic births,or are unwell or their baby is sick,its different.

But the point people here are making is that most women want their partners to stay because they have been left in pain or unable to care for their babies.

I spent one night in HDU, 9 on a post natal ward. The first night on the post natal Ward was the worst experience of my life so far. I certainly wasn't given any extra care or attention- in fact I received none. It was a paediatrician reviewing DD the following morning who ensured I got basic treatment for sepsis as I was febrile, tachycardic and hypotensive.

I don't think my partner should have had to stay to take care of my DD. But it was abundantly clear after night one that nobody else would.

Unsure whether to post as last time a poster stated if i was that mental then i shouldn't have kids
some men may want to stay to support their dp's ? Not just to hang around.
I completely get why some wouldn't want partners there, i also get why some would though.
I have anxiety. i'd want my dp there.
Both my friends who had caesareans said how alone they were and wished they'd had their dp's there to help.

Try going private? Not that I have but I'd want my Partner there

And straightforward c-sections remain a pretty big surgery. Comparable to an abdominal hysterectomy or open gallbladder surgery/appendicectomy. Patients will often have patient controlled analgesia or at a minimum regular opiates following such procedures.

If we had partners of straightfoward cs staying that would be about 40% id say.not feasible.

Plenty of women on here have had major abdominal surgery, blood loss, sepsis, infection etc etc plus paralysis and numbness from anaesthesia. All high risk issues that require medical treatment and would be treated medically on a medical ward. That's why I think postnatal should be a medical ward if the view of midwives is that women have only had a baby and they are not ill when the evidence on here and general policy clearly suggests that the vast majority of women are ill on postnatal. You don't have to be on Hdu to be ill from giving birth. I'm really surprised a midwife would say that women admitted onto postnatal ATM are just recovering from a normal birth and don't really need help because I really doubt it very much is the case in most hospitals.

How do we move forward?

Having fathers stay isn't the answer ; they are not qualified (in the main) to replace HCPs, the facilities are inadequate for them to stay overnight, there are huge issues around ensuring patient safety when unregistered non-patients are in a room with sleeping/immobile new mothers and newborn babies. And aren't new mothers entitled to a bit of privacy as they leak blood, milk and possibly urine everywhere, attempt to begin to breastfeed, and try to cope with any birth related injuries/trauma?

So how do we as women become a thorn in the side of the decision makers who are not staffing post-natal wards adequately? I was talking to a relative who works in a different branch of nursing- she was explaining that they cannot recruit enough nurses to cover vacancies, and they've been told that they are likely to lose the unsocial hours payments that come with night shifts, which I'd imagine is only going to make the problem worse if it's universal.

Ive never heard of paralysis following a birth. Immobile yes(for a time),not paralysed.

Handbag - Ayrshire may unit. Was on the Scottish news.

Persian - the problem was I woke up to find my baby missing and no idea where the hell she was!! The hospital had posters everywhere telling you not to leave your baby unattended (even not to go to the toilet!) due to the risk of abduction and I woke up and she was gone!!! Wasn't just that she wasn't in her cot, the nurse had taken her off the ward!!
The fact that she then passed my DD to other nurses when she and I were being treated for sepsis that had almost killed us both!!