AIBU to think that all mothers should have food and water on postnatal wards?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello,

Today, we at MNHQ are launching a new campaign called Better Postnatal Care: Aftercare, not Afterthought.

Over the years, we’ve been struck by how many MNers have related pretty horrible experiences on postnatal wards. We’ve also seen lots of discussions about longer term aspects of postnatal care: help with breast or bottle feeding, mental health care for new mothers, wound care after difficult births, and physio for women who feel they need it (but rarely feel able to ask for it) - among other things.

So, towards the end of last year we decided to see if we could do something about it. We ran a big survey of Mumsnet users’ experiences of postnatal care, and some of the results were striking. (You can see more here.) Among those who stayed in hospital after giving birth - which was most new mums - many reported that it was sometimes difficult to access food, pain relief, drinking water and washing facilities. 61% had been unable to access food when they needed it; 45% had been unable to access pain relief when they needed it; 22% had been unable to access water when they needed it; and 19% had been unable to access washing facilities when they needed them.

So today, we are asking the major UK political parties to commit, in their manifestos for the general election, to making sure that women on postnatal wards always have access to the absolute basics: food, water, pain relief and washing facilities.

We’re also asking everyone (this means you!) to contribute ideas about how we can make postnatal wards ‘fit for purpose’. More midwives? A fridge full of sandwiches, fruit and water on every ward? Asking all visitors and patients to turn off noises on their phones and personal devices? Maternity support assistants? Welcome cards by every bed explaining how the ward works? Making sure that inpatients and their visitors use headphones if they’re watching TV? We’re after all your suggestions, no matter how small. We’ll also be asking for input from healthcare workers with frontline experience - so if you’re one of those, please do chip in.

This isn’t about going into battle with people who work in maternity services in the NHS. Most of you feel that overall, over the year or so post-birth, standards of postnatal care are good or OK. When asked what needs to change, many of you say you think there should be more staff. Some of you had very good experiences: if you look at the ‘Good Stuff’ heading on this page you’ll see some shout-outs to hospitals and services that MNers say are getting things right. So we know that it can be done. What we want to do is find out how these hospitals are managing to get it right, and see if the lessons can be transferred.

In the months to come, the campaign will look in more detail at things like infant feeding, traumatic births, postnatal mental health, and follow-up care for birth injuries.

Please get involved with the campaign. Here are some ways you can help.

And as ever - do let us know what you think!

Thanks

Shocked at those arguing against women being given drinks and food when they need it. These are very basic.
Also units need to recognise that breastfeeding women need to eat more food. It would be simple to have sandwiches available for any woman who needs extra food.

Post natal wards should be staffed to the same level as surgical wards.
Mothers are usually discharged as early as possible so anyone needing to stay on a post natal ward obviously needs care. By trained staff.
Single rooms would cost more but I believe this would be an investment that would reduce infection, pnd and other health problems later on.

@LRDtheFeministDragon

michael - yep. I'm in the middle of trying to write a guest post for MN about it (sorry, MNHQ, I am getting to it!). It was not one of my favourite parts of the whole experience.

put that baby down and start writing

And yes we hear you all re the issue of nursing skills - really interesting and tbh not something we had anticipated - but that's why we always ask you lot what you think! We will try to dig into this a bit more. There seems to be lots of expertise among you so if anyone wants to email us about this off-thread our inbox is always open at [email protected]

Will do! Sorry.

As someone who is lactose intolerant (diagnosed) and a veggie my option for breakfast was dry bread. Not even toasted because the toaster was broken.

Lunch again was dry bread

Dinner was veg and potatoes.

As a mother who is breastfeeding it's disgusting

There has been this research into this issue.

bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-10-70

Here is the link to the NMC Code of Conduct for Nurses and Midwives (despite being separate and distinct professional groups, they are required to practice from the same ethical and legal foundation)

www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/nmc-code.pdf

The subsections with Part 1 are of particular interest; "fundamentals of care" are even explicitly listed as a footnote. Clearly there is a widespread failure to meet these standards.

I'd like to see the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Midwives, Gill Walton, address this as a matter of urgency as what's being described is of similar vein to what took place at Mid-Staffs.

The funds for tea and toast could be found by saving money on heating by turning the thermostat down a couple of degrees and having half the lights switched off.

I'm disgusted by the treatment some people have suffered on postnatal wards. Well done for campaigning for change, Mumsnet!

[quote brasty]There has been this research into this issue.

bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-10-70[/quote]

This is great, thanks Brasty

Blimey! Haven't got children (yet?) but just read the whole thread and agree with the PP who said this is TERRIFYING!!
Might have to rethink my daydreams plans to have 4 kids...

Tongue tie checks for ALL babies not just breastfed ones my bottle fed babie was t gaining weight had struggled with three different brands of bittkes only to find out 8 weeks later she had a SEVERE tie and couldn't even lift her tongue her lip is also tied

Another one here whose baby had tongue and lip tie and was told by the paediatrician that they would just sort themselves out and wouldn't need any treatment.

Looking back, I can't believe I just accepted this at the time but I had not slept for days and was in shock after a traumatic birth.

They did not sort themselves out and I had to give up breastfeeding after three very painful and frustrating weeks.

LDR disgraceful treatment of you and your partner

michael I keep going back to midwife training and nurse training in general because I think this is the absolute core of the problems we are hearing here.

Look ask any of the older nurses on the thread and you will get the same answer regarding water jugs, food, basic general care it was better during the 80s than it seems to be now. Why is that? It's not trained staff numbers.

Pre uni days there were thousands of student nurses in their 1/2/3 year of training on the wards. So by default they were the ones providing the basic care that should be taken for granted while the few trained staff were free to do more complicated procedures.

A junior nurse was there on the ward to fill the jugs, help patients to wash and were part of the team while learning. I know uni students do ward secondments I worked with some before I left ward work but they were observers not part of the team.

No one is going the basics and it's the basics that matter the most. The rest comes when those are in place like building blocks.

I can't believe we are training nurse midwives and yes they should be still nurse midwives that refuse to help patients eat and drink.

It's utterly obscene.

This is not limited to maternity wards. I don't think it has to do with staff, it has to do with resource.

The staff are the resource so get them out of uni and back on the wards.

I agree with this. It's just basic and humane. It's not humane to say to someone that because they have had their baby at 3am they will have to wait until 7 to have anything to eat or drink. Timing of labour is not a choice you make and whichever way you end up giving birth you are likely to emerge exhausted and in need of energy. There should be basic supplies -
Nothing fancy. Tea and toast would be amazing. Fruit would be super. I got nothing until 9:30am, after giving birth at 2am. Luckily I could send my husband out but there wasn't much locally and the best he could do was chocolate and crisps. I bet loads of the super food/health food brands would jump at the chance of supplying free to hospitals for use for the postnatal period as a way to attract new consumers etc. It doesn't need to be costly.

Observers? is that what you think?
My colleagues and I had our own caseloads. If we'd wanted to stand by and 'observe' we wouldn't have passed our placements. Each placement has specific and measurable tasks that have to be taught, performed, and assessed.
As a key mentor in a teaching hospital's main theatre department - before I left due to autoimmune illness - I will categorically tell you straight that student nurses do all those fundamental care tasks you refer to.
You would do well to bear in mind that within recent years, only the sickest patients actually get admitted to hospital. Fit young adults no longer get a week of bed rest following an appendicectomy - we now have "critical care without walls", to quote the DoH.
'The problem' is not university.
'The problem' is cultural, whether that's at organisational, professional, ward level needs to be investigated.
All the postnatal wards I've encountered professionally are largely staffed by midwives who are approaching retirement and just don't want to be there any more.

A small fridge to put stuff in, for example I started leaking milk early and was advised to express some early and freeze it anyway as I had gestational diabetes so my DDs blood sugar could have been low so having some milk readily expressed would allow me to give her extra food between feeds to bring her blood sugar up, my OH brought the expressed colostrum in and the midwife said I will put it in the fridge for you and never did, three bags wasted.

In our hospitals we have staff that come with menus for you to order your meals for the day and they bring them to you. Pain medicine (if needed) gets given every so many hours by the nurses. Coffee, tea or hot chocolate is also given. After 24 hrs, you are required to collect your baby during the day for feeding from the nursery. At night the nursing staff bring your baby to you.

Batsgirl you might want to read this.
www.nhs.uk/news/2014/02February/Pages/Fewer-nurses-may-lead-to-increased-mortality-rate.aspx

The problem is not university. The problem is staff having greater demands, with less resource. The problem is a reduction in bursaries affecting people training, and issues re migration and recruitment of workers from overseas plus uncertainty of EU citizens status in UK meaning that there's a need for more staff. Systems are also pushed to limit: catering squished, privately financed hospitals etc etc

I witnessed similar problems described in this post, in a discharge ward populated by mostly elderly patients. The nurse admitted that they simply ignored the patient buzzer, as otherwise they would not have time to get the meals out to people. They had no time to stay and feed them. There weren't observers. This was a lack of staff.

I find this hard to believe. Nurses and midwives aren't slaves - just because you've had a baby doesn't make you incapable of getting your own water etc. Yore brought 3 meals a day in the hospital - if you want more you can ask for it and they always have shops.

The world is becoming so entitled

The food and drink available after I had my son was ace - within an hour of giving birth I was bought a round of toast and mug of tea (DH also given tea at nurses insistence).

Breakfast was a do-it-yourself affair from a kitchen I was walked to in the morning by one of the nurses. Huge range of food and I was encouraged to load my plate. Same thing for lunch time.

My bug bear was the fact I really really wanted a bath (or failing that, a good wash) but there was only one bathroom for six women to share and the hot water had all been used up by 9am. I had my baby in December so you can imagine how cold the 'hot' water was!

I had no issues with this! We did have to go and get our breakfast from a communal room but lunch and tea brought to us. Water available etc no problems

Definitely a little brochure telling you how things work. I felt completely at sea, and when I asked anything, I was treated like a child. Also, I gave birth late on a Sunday so nothing open. I just wanted a cup of tea and a sandwich after 7 hours of giving birth. Ho ho. You'd have thought I'd have asked for a four course meal! I eventually got them about 2 hours after the birth. I was treated awfully. I didn't have a partner to help me: I had my mum and dad, but they didn't know the drill at all. It was all horrible....