Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Phone conversations on maternity wards

206 replies

user1494667160 · 16/12/2017 07:13

It is 7am and the woman in the next hospital bay has been on the phone for the last half hour.
She is doing my head in.
It is a maternity ward so only gave birth yesterday. Absolutely shattered from babies waking up all night (completely reasonable as that is what being on a maternity ward is all about).
But being on your phone and having lengthy conversations at 7am is taking the mick.
I finally drifted off at 6am and woke up to her chatting away loudly.
She is speaking another language as well which means what she is saying to me sounds just like an extra noise!
Raaaaa

OP posts:
LolitaLempicka · 16/12/2017 08:39

Oh MrsPatel, I'm blushing, you can call me love anytime xxx

BunsOfAnarchy · 16/12/2017 08:41

I think understanding the language makes it worse! If you're loud and noisy, I don't wanna hear your shitty life story on top of it.
I hate hearing peoples converstaions on the phone. I cant understand why people hold full on convos for 30 mins on the train or bus either. I wish they were talking another language (all this from the one time i forgot my headphones on my commute lol)

You need to speak to the midwives and tell them you need her to quiet down as she's louder than she may realise.

Language isn't the issue here. The talking is. She probably is ringing a different time zone or doesn't know how loud she is. But she won't know to stop unless she is told. Simple

FrancisCrawford · 16/12/2017 08:42

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Usernamechecksout · 16/12/2017 08:43

I feel for you, the maternity ward can be awful. When I was there, there was only one other woman in our room, but she kept me up with her snoring. She snored so loud she kept waking her own baby up! I was already getting no sleep because I had trouble establishing breastfeeding, so they were long nights of trying to get the baby to latch, failing and having to cup feed, then not being able to sleep due to that woman’s snoring or her baby crying, then if I drifted off, being woken up by the nurse cause it was time to feed! I was glad I could go home after two nights. Hang in there!

user1499786242 · 16/12/2017 08:44

Oh god this brings memories back
The family in the bed next to me were horrific
She spoke on the phone for hours and hours! And then her elderly mother visited and had the worst cough I've ever heard, I honestly thought she was going to cough up her own lungs...
And then they had a group prayer which lasted hours... oh I was mad

And then the woman opposite said on the phone 'this ward is so boring, none of the other mums wanna chat'

And when someone's kid opened my curtain whilst I was stood up knickers round my ankles

Actually considering a home birth because of how bad the wards are 🙈🙈

FabulouslyGlamorousFerret · 16/12/2017 08:46

Why are people looking to be offended and find something to argue about? I'm waiting for someone to slip in something about trans women in a moment 🤣 my BIL is Egyptian and always talks to his family on the phone in a loud excitable manner, he also doesn't have that British habit of 'shushing' when he's on the phone and others are around him ... drives me mad. OP I hope you're out of there soon.

LolitaLempicka · 16/12/2017 08:48

How would trans women be relevant in this conversation Fab?

HarassedElf · 16/12/2017 08:53

Better a phone conversation than a baby being left to cry in the middle of the night for a couple of hours "because I have three other children at home and he has to get used to fitting in."

Ketzele · 16/12/2017 08:54

On snoring, though - it's really, really annoying, but people can't actually help it, can they? I have a dp with sleep apnoea, and hospital stays have been very embarrassing (not nice waking up and hearing everyone complaining about you). I feel great sympathy for her (though also want to put an icepick through her head at 3am).

Minniemountain · 16/12/2017 08:58

I begged to be discharged the day after having DS. They hadn't let me go as my blood pressure was high. I wonder why Hmm

FrLukeDuke · 16/12/2017 09:00

Try and get home as soon as poss. I started to go insane with sleep deprivation after three nights as i was in with complications. Sleep and recuperation used to be prioritised for new mothers in the past in hospitals but it certainly isn't now

anothernetter · 16/12/2017 09:04

Oh dear Lolita you sound like you are having a bad morning love. I'd go back to bed if I were you and try getting up a bit later. You poor dear!

ItsNiceItsDifferentItsUnusual · 16/12/2017 09:04

I was fucking dreading my hospital stay with ds2 but luckily I was only on the ward with one other person. She was having a tough time bless her but wasn't rudely loud or anything.

With ds1 it was a few days before Christmas so they'd obviously brought forward c-sections/inductions and it was HEAVING. I didn't sleep a wink after a bloody awful 24 hour labour and it massively impacted my recovery and general mental health. And that was just from the sheer number of people, they weren't even being dicks.

Postnatal wards are evil things.

LolitaLempicka · 16/12/2017 09:08

Thanks for your concern another. I am on a different time zone. I will go and talk to some people in another language and then go to bed.

AnonEvent · 16/12/2017 09:09

First of all congratulations- maternity wards are like the final test, you've carried a baby for nine ish months, you've put your body through unimaginable stress, but can you hack a night with a bunch of other babies and nattering parents?

And of course it's easier to listen to someone talk in a language you know, your brain can be quite latent you can block it out and only pick up on the interesting bits, whereas with an unknown language your brain will try to fiddle with it to try to make sense of it, hence it's more distracting.

Will you be home today/tomorrow?

Beakyplinders · 16/12/2017 09:09

Oh dear Lolita you sound like you are having a bad morning love. I'd go back to bed if I were you and try getting up a bit later. You poor dear!

Agreed. Unless of course Lolita is actually currently stuck on a noisy maternity ward herself and that explains her mood.

Plot twist - Lolita IS the other mum speaking on the phone 😱 dum dum duuuuummmm

DeltaG · 16/12/2017 09:10

Reading this makes me thankful for being in a small Swiss hospital, in my own room!

LolitaLempicka · 16/12/2017 09:11

Yeah, Sorry I was being so loud with my extra noise. I have learnt my lesson.

MoistCantaloupe · 16/12/2017 09:11

How would trans women be relevant in this conversation Fab?

LOL Lolita, are you bored? All this reaching for an argument. You’ve not made one comment on the actual point of the OP.

LolitaLempicka · 16/12/2017 09:13

And nor has fab

BendydickCuminsnatch · 16/12/2017 09:16

I know this isn't the point, but if they have one available, move to a private room. Worth every fucking penny (£450 a night at our hosp, luckily my first night I was in the high dependency room, so that was a free private room, but ya know, I was very ill Grin)

Maternity wards are hell on earth.

LittleCandle · 16/12/2017 09:18

When DD1 was born (in the dark ages of the early 90s), I was in hospital for a week. I had my baby blues on day4, they took away my puking child to give her a bottle (which made her puke even more) and pulled the curtains round my bed. I was diverted from my cry by the girl in the bed opposite, who had been in my class at school and was now a neighbour, talking about me to the other occupant of the ward. Apparently, the curtains rendered me deaf. The other girl was making non-committal noises, clearly aware that I could hear everything. Then school 'chum' said she wished she had a tissue. I replied that I had some in with me. The silence was monumental! After a very long pause, she thanked me and came in for some. It really did make me feel much better.

She also had her husband arriving in late at night - think 10pm - because their baby was a week early and he hadn't taken his leave, and she would wander off downstairs to meet him, leaving her baby behind. He inevitably screamed the place down. Then they would pull the curtains round the bed and if they weren't having sex, it damn sure sounded like it! The other girl and I were most annoyed, but the midwifes did nothing about it.

contrary13 · 16/12/2017 09:20

Congratulations, OP Flowers

When I had DD, the woman in the bed next to mine on the post-natal ward decided that it was appropriate to play music on a portable CD player which her OH had brought in for her whenever her baby cried - perhaps to try to drown it out? This would have been fine, I guess, if it wasn't the middle of the night and the rest of us weren't on a ward with her. She woke all of the sleeping babies/mums up, and a couple of midwives came hurtling down the ward to her cubicle, stuck their heads in and told her that it was inappropriate, disturbing everyone else and to turn the music off. I remember that she was quite pissy about this... because her curtains were drawn around her bed, so the rest of us wouldn't be able to hear the music, and didn't we/the midwives understand that she needed the baby to get used to the music, because she loved the band, and... and... and...! All well and good if she'd been a teenage mum (which, at the time, I was, before anyone thinks I'm judging!) but she was old enough to have given birth to me and, from what I could gather, had other kids at home. I sometimes wonder if that baby grew up liking the same band as its mum...

When I had DS, a few years later, in the ante-natal ward where we were all in various stages of active labour, all waiting for a delivery room to become free, the mum in the bed opposite me was head down and arse up in the air, obviously in excrutiating pain, and crying for someone to help her. Her OH was just sat next to her bed, ignoring her. She gave birth on that bed shortly after, when I and a couple of the other mums had done as her OH perhaps ought to have and wandered off to try to get the (horrendously busy) midwives to help her in some way - with her OH bleating pitifully that she "should have said something"! The mum in the next bed to mine and I just looked at one another with raised eyebrows at the time. I hope she left him. She and her (thankfully healthy) little boy deserved someone who paid attention to what was happening to them.

AnonEvent · 16/12/2017 09:35

For people who haven't birthed yet, check if your hosp has private rooms, ours did in a first-come-first-served basis, best £100 I ever spent.

honeysucklejasmine · 16/12/2017 09:49

contrary that is awful, poor woman. What an arsehole.