To think post natal wards are absolute shit?

[SprogletsMum]

I had ds2 this morning and have been put onto a full 4 bay ward.

2 of the 3 other women have been quiet most of the day but one keeps ringing people all day long. There has not been a single minute of quiet all day.
I've been awake since 1am and I'm shattered but she just won't shut up.
I'm going home to the other 3 dc for some peace and quiet as soon as ds2s 12 hours of obs are up.

It happened to me too Vegan. I managed without any drugs having DD. The midwife stitching me up said that since it was a smallish tear and I'd 'done so well' without any pain relief, she didn't want to 'ruin' it by giving me a local anaesthetic. I was pretty out of it so I must have hazily agreed. It was fucking agony. Then she told me off for flinching/jumping when she was doing it and I apologised. It sounds made up but it really happened and fairly recently.

ds is now in his 20's but omg it was horrid when he was born, the whole place was so HOT. i ended up being awake all the time..went home early. so sad nothing has changed

YY 53rdandBird! I would have been in an even worse situation if DH hadn't have been able to be there 12hrs/day. He provided my basic care (both times). My first night in after an elcs with DC1 and I was still hooked up to the catheter as they hadn't had time to remove it (cs was at 9am), they were so short staffed my baby had her nappy changed at 9pm as DH was sent home, then at 9am when he was allowed back in. I was in so much pain I couldn't sit up, let alone twist and lift the baby. No staff around, and on the rare occasion you did see someone you were made to feel like a burden. I had one midwife huff at me because I asked for my water jug to be refilled (first night hooked to that catheter. I wasn't exactly able to run to the sink myself!). I felt so alone and out of my depth those first few nights.
The second time I was put in a side room as I was recovering from a cat1 emcs due to their balls up. It turns out it's even easier to ignore you in a side room. At one point I buzzed as I needed more pain relief, it had been a number of hours since the last lot, only to wait 20mins for someone to turn up and tell me the drug round was already underway so I needed to wait for that. The dispensing midwives turned up over an hour later and I was sobbing from the pain by then. It was several hours after I would have been allowed the next dose if all was done on schedule. Awful.

Aside from the heat and food (if you think it's bad under normal circumstances, try being limited to the vegetarian option... DC1 I had jacket with beans and/or cheese for lunch and dinner for 4 days), everything else seemed to come down to staffing levels TBH. No help with bf (DC1. DC2 they were mostly good), not keeping on top of pain relief, not bringing water/food when bed bound, not even telling when mealtimes were so you had to wait until you smelled something vaguely edible, it taking all day from when they said they'd discharge to us actually being discharged (surely they wanted that prized side room vacant?). And that's without getting me started on that fucking Bounty woman...

These stories are terrible. I feel for you all

My opinion of post natal care plummeted after DC2's birth. We were due to be discharged 24 hours after his birth. I had had the all clear, but the doctor noticed tiny, pinprick red marks over my baby's back and torso. He wasn't sure what the cause was and apparently there is a serious condition which can manifest with these marks, so he decided to keep us in for 48 hours observation.

Only nobody so much as looked at the baby at all over the whole 48 hour period. I had my regular 6 hourly obs, but nobody observed my baby doing anything, even when I asked if he was doing OK. At the end of the 48 hours I kicked up a stink, the doctor came back and agreed the marks had faded so we all got to go home.

I still have no idea what that 48 hours achieved.

I had my first 2.5 years ago and the post natal ward was horrid - far too hot, minging bathroom facilities and just so, so understaffed at night that I had no pain relief, monitoring or support with DD (emcs).

Second time round (Last month, this time elcs), was so much better - they said there had been a change in management and wow, it showed!

2 hourly obs, and whenever they checked me they helped with DS; the bathrooms had been done up, the temperature was normal, the staff helped so much with everything and I couldn't have asked for more. Another thing that helped was the bays were organised better so my bay was full of c sections, and there was a room at the end nearest nicu specifically for transitional care babies.

I felt so so much better in hospital and really think this helped a huge amount with how quickly I have recovered. The whole experience was just indescribably better than the first time.

This was at QMC Nottingham.

I agree. Far too hot, not private enough, too noisy and understaffed. I had to wait 2 hours for pain medication, it was fucking agony.

I don't know why it has to be so hot, I know they don't want tiny babies getting cold but a bit of circulating fresh air would do everyone a bit of good and they recommend a home temp between 16 and 20 degrees! So those babies go home to much lower temps and are absolutely fine. I was sweating through the night so much I couldn't sleep.

oh god, it was awful. YANBU. definitely contributed to PND first time around. Sheets filthy and never changed, filthy bathrooms, rude staff, everyone's baby crying etc etc and couldn't get any rest. Genuinely traumatic and awful. Had DC2 abroad and it was heaven.

These stories are awful. I feel bad for moaning on here now, my stay was a breeze compared to this. I'm so glad mumsnet are on to this.

Awful. 3 other ladies who talked all the time, phoned all the time. Small amount of money I had bought it was stolen. Minimal MW care, no help with struggling to bf. couldn't wait to get home.

Wow - my gd was born 2 years ago and the room they went in was like a hotel - single large room, en suite etc and this was in a very run down local hospital in a small town.

But she had a rapid labour and gave birth in reception - there was no time to get to labour ward. Maybe this meant she was a different category of patients as she did not give birth in maternity ward.

I was shocked at how nice it was tbh.

Awful awful awful. I'm so glad that my family is complete because I will never have to stay on a postnatal ward again. After DS1 was born my mum took my shoes away because I was in such a state. I'm sure if she hadn't I would have tried to walk home carrying the baby, this was after a section. After my second the ward was so cold and I didn't have enough bedclothes so I ended up wrapping my newborn in dirty towels to keep him warm. My third was a disaster, they didn't change the urine bag and my catheter backed up or something - not quite clear what happened but it wasn't nice. After my fourth I couldn't get any food, I needed dairy free because two of my other children are CMPA and they kept bringing me other people's food instead of what I had ordered. I could go on at length. Every single time on the postnatal ward was an awful experience for me.

Some awful experiences on here. It's actually hugely worrying that mothers and newborns are subjected to this level of degradation and abandonment.

With my first baby, we were lucky. I was in overnight for induction and placed on a postnatal ward. That was fairly shit and the staff didn't believe I was in labour until I screamed the joint down. I say lucky because he was born at 6.40am and I didn't have to go back onto a postnatal ward, we were discharged and home by 3pm.

With my daughter it was very different. Brought in for induction then that abandoned as she was breech. Kept in on an awful antenatal ward and starved for a c section. For some inexplicable reason I was moved twice in one night and it was never made clear to me. Then following a normal delivery - as she turned at the last minute- I was plonked on a full to bursting postnatal ward at just gone midnight. Annoyingly the lovely ideal room at the end had "just gone " to an awful shouty woman with her ball scratching chain smoking husband who kept banging her door closed to go out for a tab every half an hour.
My postnatal ward was like some sort of Red Cross disaster zone. The bathroom was unforgivably filthy, used bloody cloths and cardboard pans overflowing. A shit stained toilet full of blood and no towels or hand wash. I cried at that point, and had to wheel my precious baby up a corridor in agony to find a cleaner bathroom.
The women on the ward were so loud and ignorant it was unreal. They kept turning the overhead light on because they were constantly going out for cigarettes. Their babies cried every second they were gone. The remaining woman was crying and shouting in what I think was Polish on her phone until 4.30am. I was Breastfeeding but nobody came to check if she was latching properly. I wasn't offered a cup of tea and it took an hour to get a jug of what looked like stagnant water.
At 8am I got a bollocking for standing up at the entrance to the ward with MY daughter saying it was dangerous, at that point I laughed and said, sorry but if we're on the subject of things being dangerous around here, you need to get a fucking grip.
I was totally strung out and had had exactly zero hours of sleep. When my OH arrived we got everything ready, waited for the newborn examination then I demanded to self discharge. They said I have produced enough urine to be allowed to go home. Not surprising since I'd been left with no fluid at all. I promptly went to the toilet and did a minute pee topped up with tap water. No questions asked.....

I went home and after introducing my son to his baby sister, fed her then collapsed into bed for some sleep. My mother had to practically slap me to wake me to feed a v hungry baby.

I'm expecting my third now and as before home birth is ruled out for a couple of historical reasons. I'm genuinely dreading the thought of being on a postnatal ward again.

I'm hoping that the experiences on this thread aren't typical.

I have had good experiences. Genuinely helpful and lovely midwives, clean bathrooms and good care. I can't praise it highly enough. If anyone wants to know which hospital this is please send me a pm.

My experience was at Kings in 2008, and it was a 4 day stay.

Everything was cleaned well - it was impossible to keep clean permanently because there were frankly a lot of visitors' shoes coming in and out, and there's not really much that could be done about that. I suppose cleaning in the evening rather than the morning would help.

The food was awful. I felt really bad because there was a large Caribbean contingent in the hospital and they, rightly, had food catered specifically for them so there wasn't so much of a culture shock. The problem was, the funding of that was specifically for that, so I couldn't choose from that menu because it was race specific, so I sat in a room with glorious smells of spiced food while eating my puddle of grey.

My experience was also of the hot, crowded room, but... the thing that made it OK was the brilliance of the staff. Though they were probably as understaffed as anyone, we benefited from having a ward sister (several, in fact), who took nonsense from no-one. Visitors were evicted at 9, including the one family who appeared to want to stay long into the night. That particular family were also encouraged to separate so that some could walk around the grounds, and others could stay, then turn about. So the crowd of 5 was down to 2 or 3 most of the time. Phones were forbidden after 9 too. The lights went off at 10 in all the rooms. If anyone wanted lights, they could only use the above bed lights.

I had an absolutely panic on the first night. DS had been sleepy all day, then woke up ravenous and I didn't really know what to do so just started pacing in the corridor, hoping. I hadn't slept in about 46 hours or so, and they found me, popped me back to bed, showed me how to do a sleeping latch, assured me they'd keep an eye, then came back regularly to check I was OK. It meant I was calm and the others could sleep. Yes, babies woke up randomly to feed, but again, there's not much can be done about that.

I have long standing depression which was in my notes. One of the midwives took me aside, away from DH, to gently ask whether I was OK, whether I knew what services were available with or without DHs knowledge. As it happens, DH is brilliant about my mental health problems, but I valued the fact that they didn't know that, and made sure I was safe and comfortable in case he was a problem.

These were the days before the fathers were allowed to stay, so I don't know how things would be for them now, but it was a difficult, exhausted experience made bearable by some brilliant nurses who were very much in command of the ward to make sure nobody was behaving selfishly.

This thread is making me remember the horror of it all. Yes, toilets filled with bedpans with blood and urine in them, left for hours. I had to query why my cannula was still in after about 24 hours where it hadn't been used (it kept catching on things). They then came and removed it, grumpily. No sleep, bright, hot and noisy. Catheter bag was at one point dragged over the floor. No explanation of why they were/ weren't doing anything, took ages to be discharged. I was crying for hours in pain before the drugs trolley was brought round and it was admitted that they'd missed a dose of pain relief. I was so happy when my baby was born but at that point I just felt so low - think I was lucky it didn't turn into PND but I came home exhausted and feeling so low. The same hospital had very good pre-natal care (MAU and DAU both excellent) and the care around the csection also good. We expect dc2 to be our last but to be honest if a DC3 was on the cards, the idea of having to stay there again would put me off.

I was also one of those unlucky women who couldn't have a partner there all the time. We'd been let down by family in terms of having people to care for DD and though a friend had her the day of the birth, she had work committments so DH had to be in charge. The low point for me was when I was starving, in pain, very thirsty but no-one helping me and DH was told he couldn't come on the ward with DD until 4:30pm (but he obviously couldn’t leave her). If I'd have had more sleep / less pain I would have told them that DD by herself would have been able to take better care of me than they were. I might actually raise a complaint now. It had a real effect on my mental health post-birth.

I remember reading one of these threads a while ago and a point that stayed with me was about nurses vs midwives. I can't remember exactly but I recall several posters making the point that midwives are trained primarily in caring for labouring women. Whereas nurses are trained in, well, nursing. I wonder if there is an argument for nurses to provide care to women on postnatal wards?

That's not the case. We train in the care of ante and post-natal women as much as we train to care for labouring women. In fact we have to provide evidence of much more ante and post natal care than we do births in order to qualify.

Many of the staff on post natal will be Maternity Care Assitants (equivalent of HCAs on other wards). There will generally only be one qualified midwife per bay, and often less. That's the problem: not that midwives are incapable of caring for postnatal women. The problem is there's not enough of us, and we're often forced to hand tasks over to unqualified MCAs.

Pingu, yes - my impression was lack of staff was the main problem, although I think the communication between staff wasn't great either. I had to often explain things several times. The midwives when i saw them (rarely) were mostly lovely. Is it a resources issue?

Oh I remember the stitching as well. It was awful although I had pain relief.

I had to go to theatre as I had a bad tear. I had an epidural but the surgeon put my legs in the stirrups, then came over and bloody smacked me between the legs!! I jumped like mad even though it wasn't painful but I could still feel the smack. She commented to the anaesthetist that she hadn't expected me to jump so much. I begged him to top me up but he said I was at my maximum. I hate the feeling of being 'fiddled' around with down there and that's what being stitched felt like, even though I was numb. I found that worse than the labour and forceps birth. It was awful. I think I was being stitched for over half an hour. Some bloody compassion from her would have gone a long way, she knew what state I was in as she had to come and do the forceps birth over 2 hours before, then I was left with no real explanation. I don't really remember those 2 hours waiting and they were the first of my DS's life. Then I had to be taken away and was waiting in recovery desperate to see my baby but it seemed to take forever and I was pretty much ignored.

Can anyone tell me if their stories are related to Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth please?!

I am asking because I'm 40 weeks pregnant and due to give birth there so I'd really appreciate a response if anyone has had a poor experience there recently. Thanks all.

Can you try your local board of MN? I was wondering the same about my hospital as it's not the one I gave birth in last time but thought I might get more replies if I asked on a local board. Can't find them on the app though

Fanatical a few years ago the midwife led unit had a good reputation as did Blakes but the consultant led unit was awful. It led me to having my dd at Princess Anne in Southampton. My experience there was dreadful. The consultant's first words to me when I was on the postnatal ward were "Are you going to sue us?"

There were very few staff, no information about ward routines - first morning they brought you breakfast after that you had to make your own way to a room to get it but no-one mentioned it so had to go without breakfast. No point ringing the call bell as it went unanswered. At best you might see a nurse once a day.

Staff handover meetings meant what staff were there were unavailable for at least an hour. God knows what they were talking about as they had no idea what state most of their patients were in. Hygiene wasn't too bad but you felt that you were mainly invisible and when you did see occasionally see a member of staff you felt that you were a burden. It took 6 hours to get from agreement that I could go home to actually walking out the door. I could have just walked out and I doubt anyone would have noticed for a few days.

What you need is a DP/relative/friend to be your advocate, carer and supplier of food. Hopefully it will be an easy delivery and you'll be home quickly.

Shouldn't this be a @mumsnet campaign?

Imagine if the daily mail picked up these meaningful stories instead of the tea tree up fanjo ones, hey?