Phone conversations on maternity wards

[user1494667160]

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

When I had my babies, they took them up to nicu and kept me downstairs for 7 hours. I eventually got to go up and see them about 3am and stayed for about an hour before they wheeled me to the postnatal ward. I was in a bay with five mums and babies all chatting on their phones and being excitable while I wasn't sure if my babies would survive. Worst bloody night of my life. People need to have a bit of a thought for those around them in such confined spaces. Mind you, they booted me out less than 48 hours after my section so I didn't have to put up with it for long! Hopefully you can go home soon.

I was in a 4 bed bay on antenatal when my twins were born prematurely. They kept all NICU mums on antenatal rather than postnatal, so that we didn't have to be around babies.

Mind you, we had a proper loud whiny moaner in our bay. She just had a constant litany of moaning and groaning noises (all night long), interspersed with insults about the midwives. If I hadn't known she'd had a c-section a few hours before me, I'd have assumed she was in labour. She was offered pain relief but didn't take it. I was ready to ask for a sleeping tablet!

Absolutely YANBU! I spent over a week in hospital when having DS and i was driven mad by the noise and phone calls! The woman opposite me called everyone she knew at all hours. Another woman taking long calls about her house renovation and another calling her DH at 2am - not because she was upset which I could understand but just to say night night and chat about trivial shit.

Obviously being in hospital is hard on anyone, and I had moments where I was desperate to talk to someone who wasn't a midwife. But I kept phone calls to a minimum as I was aware of others on the ward and there was always WhatsApp....

You don't really understand the saying 'hell is other people' until you've had a hospital stay I reckon!

Yanbu! I gave birth to DD2 at 2 in the morning and adrenaline and hungry baby meant I was wired til 4am. I began to doze when the baby in the bed next door began to cry- totally reasonable. What was not reasonable was the sing song baby voice of the mother narrating every effing move. This continued all morning- feeding, nappy changes, berating her husband, holiday plans...
still hate that stupid yakking woman!!

Something weird has happened over the last decade. People seem to have no idea how to behave in a public space. It's as if other people can't see and hear them, and, if they can, so what?

In cinemas, they talk all through the film, get up to go the gents/ladies, disturbing a whole row, whenever the mood takes them, crunch crisps and slurp drinks. On trains, they do their make-up and clip their fingernails. They go to the supermarket in pyjamas.

And everywhere these loud, sometimes intimate, one-sided conversations on the phone. If they were having them in public face to face, they'd at least whisper some of the things I've overheard.

Where did it all come from?

Eugh all these stories remind me of my time on post-natal too. Not a few days a remember with much fondness! I had an EMCS and afterwards was left in a boiling hot recovery room where I promptly dehydrated and felt incredibly nauseated. The doctor was not happy with the midwives about it. Then, once on the ward, similar experiences - noise, heat, constant comings and goings... a lady was put in the bed next to mine who had also had a CS and who spent the night vomiting (not her fault but I am emetophobic so left me in an awful state). Baby was slightly out of my reach in the cot thing and during the night started to choke - apparently that is normal after CS but nobody had forewarned me. I was terrified and couldn't move due to catheter etc. Luckily one of the other mums opposite saw my predicament and came to help. I felt utterly horrendous - overwhelmed, out of my depth - and the conditions on the post natal ward, which meant you couldn't sleep, did nothing to help. I got diarrhoea the following day and so they moved me into a private room, just in case I was infectious... that was much better but I just look back on the whole experience of being in there and all I remember is how awful I felt, which is such a shame since I had just had my beautiful DS.

Midwives were a mixed bag, too. Some absolutely lovely, some lacking in any compassion and made you feel like shit. DS found it hard to latch on for BF and one of them tried to show me how to push his head forward towards the boob. I said I was afraid of hurting him and she replied: "you'll hurt him a lot more if you don't learn to breastfeed him!" Way to make someone feel awful.

Agree with others too - toilets disgusting. I was so bloody desperate to get out of there after 3 days. Awful awful awful.