AIBU for hating the Pampas advert thanking midwives.

[ToadsforJustice]

I didn't have a positive experience with any of the MW I had the misfortune of seeing whilst having my DC.

I find the advert really triggering. I don't think I would thank anyone for the misery and pain they caused me.

And also - the amount of shit we get from members of the public is one of the things that makes me dread going in to work. The other day at work in a meeting we were talking about the aggression we face - out of 12 of us 6 had been assaulted/threatened in the last 12 months at work - yeah, totally worth the 25k.

Hear hear!

I had the same midwife throughout my first pregnancy and was given her for my second pregnancy but was majorly relieved when she was off sick for the majority of my second pregnancy. When I was given her again in my third, I called them up to ask for a different one. She reminded me of an old school head mistress, very stern and not at all forthcoming or comforting. I dreaded going to see her with DC1 every single time but I was young and scared to say anything. She was also fairly racist blaming the high stillbirth rate in my area on ‘those foreigners smoking and drinking and sleeping with their cousins’ .

I had a bad labour experience with my third too. I was desperate for a home birth but the midwife that turned up was pregnant and ‘had a reaction to my clary sage oil’. I stopped burning it as soon as she turned up, opened all the windows and doors and she sat in a completely different room but was still adamant after six hours she was ‘feeling funny’ so we had to be transferred to hospital . I honestly still think to this day she couldn’t be arsed and wanted to go home, I was so pissed off.

So no, they’re not all great. During my first delivery they missed the fact my DS’s shoulders were stuck for over an hour as a big example. I do fully appreciate the stress all NHS staff are under though and most are obviously lovely.

Women on this thread have been discussing the very real trauma of being neglected, mocked and mistreated by the people who were supposed to be looking after them at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives.

Of course they aren't going to be thankful or nice about it.

Don't be upset at the victims here, be angry at the people in your profession who have put these women through hell and therefore created this level of mistrust and dislike.

I had a terrible mw for dd1 but that has not fazed me that most mw's work hard and really do the best they can. Yanbu for your own feelings. Yabu to assume that mw's shouldn't be recognised because of your experiance.

My midwife when I was in labour was fantastic, a real beacon of light during a tough time. Stayed past her shift as I had an emergency section to give my husband my little one whilst I was in recovery.
My community midwife was also fantastic as when I seen her in the hospital she came over spoke to me, came to see LO in NICU and sat with me for over an hour.
My midwifes where amazing even If I did projectile vomit on her!

I was suprised the babies were so clean as were the mums my delivery suite looked like an abattoir they put a cannula in and my blood hit the far wall

I would have loved nice midwives they were ok but clearly overworked so no back rubs for me

@nancy75 but it's the midwives who push the whole birth plan idea.

Mine wasn't binned, they made me finish it as they were preparing to do the ARM, which I knew was pointless as it was clear by that point that I wasn't going to get what I'd wanted (mainly to be mobile) and then wanted to stick to the pethidine rather than an epidural when I was screaming the place down in agony. Ended up with an epidural as well as the pethidine as the latter made things worse by adding disorientation and confusion on top of the agony.

There was also the 'ooh, these scissors are very blunt' conversation they had while doing an episiotomy and they missed the fact that I wasn't pushing for most of the contractions because they didn't check the monitor until after DS was born and then were all 'ooh, look at this, those look like contractions'. 'Can't be, she wasn't pushing'. I hadn't felt any of them, had no urge to push at all.

The whole thing was terrifying and traumatic and I felt that to a lot of the staff I was either an annoyance (I asked questions!) or an inconvenience.

With all due respect, you're getting one side here. I don't mistrust and dislike members of the public, despite being kicked in the bump by a woman in labour when she was bickering with her husband and took her anger out on me while i was changing her pads with her on the bed. Despite being held by the throat by a man who came in to support his wife in labour but was completely intoxicated and got angry when asked to leave. And despite over 10 women having extremely rude reactions to me not having children (infertility prevented me at the time) and being a midwife, stating that I couldn't possibly relate to the women and hadn't got a clue.

Because why would I generalise and tar all people with the same brush? And all the above incidents were very traumatic to me, I ended up inpatient after being kicked in the bump.

Have to add the community midwives were all lovely, as were the ones on the post natal ward.

It was just the ones on the delivery suite who seemed to have no empathy, or even the ability to see me as a person.

@igorina - it’s not ‘putting someone through hell’ to give them an emergency episiotomy to save their babies life!

Many people are unprepared for birth, and blame doctors and midwifes for their pain and suffering when they expected to have a straightforward painfree water birth.

Women are at their most vulnerable when in labour, and some perceive wrongdoing and slights that aren’t their. We should be reassuring these women that their experience was normal, and supporting them to come to terms with it, not damning healthcare proffesionals as evil sadists who enjoy being rude to everyone.

Obviously some people will genuinely have had poor care, and this is awful and unacceptable. My experience though is that more and more people have ridiculously high expectations, and will say the most awful things about the people trying to help them if things aren’t going the way they would like.

I had a pretty eventful birth, with things like a failed epidural, several failed cannula attempts, ended up giving birth ins tirrups with no pain relief. That’s what birth is, painful and unpredictable! I was and am so so grateful for the people who cared for me that day, and meant that me and my child came out of it alive and unharmed, even though it was t the birth I would have chosen.

mirime a midwife got me to write the birth plan at ante natal classes, that’s why I was so shocked when the midwife when I had Dd just chucked it away!
The midwife just treated me like I was a time waster really, when I got there they kept saying how busy they were, it was my first baby so it would be hours, I shouldn’t have come in so early, just generally made to feel like a bit of a pest. Considering I got there at 7.30am and Dd was born at 8.50am it’s a good job I refused to go home!
I had pethadine so was off my head for most of it but dp told me after the midwife had hardly been in the room and he had to go to find her when he realised I was actually having the baby right then

Well, that's you Flat and fair play to you for being able to move on.

The "You're only getting one side here" is something I see often when women talk about their bad experiences of childbirth on MN from HPCs.

What you describe is awful and I have no reason to disbelieve your version of events. I know how hard midwives have it.

I also believe the women on this thread when they describe how they have been mistreated - I have been there myself and have read far too many similar things for this not to be a real problem in the profession.

@Balthazarsbonnet

Hmm, I had an episiotomy, and I still had a third degree tear and spent three hours in theatre having it stitched.

They did get my consent though, asked very clearly for it. Unlike the first lot that morning who started doing something I hadn't agreed to and when challenged said the consultant had changed his mind and treated me as silly for making a fuss - would it really have been so hard to tell me of the change in plan rather than just starting to do it? It wasn't an emergency situation, it was a change to the course of action I'd had explained to me and that I'd agreed to.

Completely butting in here... But I am in that Pampers commercial! With my baby!

That is all...

Another hcp bashing thread on mumsnet - what a shock. One day we won’t have anyone to birth our babies or care for our dying. And we would deserve that considering the way we treat them.

I'm not disbelieving - what i am stating is something that we see on relationship threads too.

What I find, is that it is quite rare for someone to have a fantastic birth experience and go on to tell everyone about it, make a post on mumsnet about it. as we know, people more often than not go on tripadvisor, review something etc when they've had a bad experience. so it's not really an accurate idea of what it's like.

I don't think performing an episiotomy without consent in an emergency is mistreating if there is literally no other option and you need to save a life. But i fully appreciate that your perception in these situations can be skewed by the utter panic that someone is experiencing.

But no, I do not accept that there is a problem in the profession, i think there's the same issue with humans everywhere, some are good and some are crap.

agedknees it’s not hcp bashing to tell the truth about what happened to you personally.
My experience is with one person, that doesn t mean I think all midwives are terrible and I’m sure most people are sensible enough to know that a few bad apples don’t mean the entire profession is awful.

The midwife with my second child was bloody awful. I was strapped to a monitor as every time I had a contraction his heart rate dipped. The mw told me if I didn't do as I was told (lie on a specific side) my baby would die.

Another thing, 5 band 6 midwives who are amazing have retired early in the last 3 months and 5 x newly qualified midwives have replaced them because they can't get the staff. No problem with newly qualified midwives, but you learn so much in your first year...it will be a huge loss now that those midwives have gone. they didn't need to retire for ages yet, but they just can't hack the lack of thanks from managers/ feeling unappreciated in general considering the hours they put in. And I imagine reading a thread like this would be enough to really knock someones confidence and push them towards unnecessary early retirement. Personally, i work on a nicu, do you know how hard it is to resuscitate a baby and then just walk out and keep smiling for a 12 hour shift. it's draining.

If a baby's heartrate dips the first thing you should do is get someone to lie on their left side, it's the first step before the emergency kicks in. Saying the baby would die was very over dramatic and not tactical at all, but i have had someone refuse to lie on their left side before because they said it was uncomfortable, and as a result we had to give facial oxygen and a bag of fluids which was totally unnecessary and put the baby at risk because really all that needed to happen was a left lateral position.

Balthazar I didn't give a shit about my "birth plan", just wanted my baby out alive. I was dismissed and ridiculed by a succession of midwives who refused to examine me or believe I was in labour nor to listen to me telling them I had reduced movement. Not til the fourth day of labour did I finally get seen by a lovely consultant and get rushed off for an emergency section. Both my newborn son and I nearly died of sepsis.

So no, my expectations were not unrealistic. My expectations were merely that I should be listened to and respected.

Gosh, there are some horrible stories here, I really feel sorry for you ladies that had such a raw deal :-( My midwives were lovely, although the first one got massively carried away upping my dosage of Oxitocin at an alarming rate until my husband, who works in medicine, stopped her! Otherwise I have a memory of lovely ladies but mostly a group of them rather than any one in particular. Glad I am not going through all that again though :-D

Two things always happen on threads where women are open and honest about their bad experiences of labor and childbirth.

Number one is someone will suggest the women who have been mistreated can't really be trusted to give an accurate account of what happened to them for one reason or another.

Number two is someone will say how hard midwives have it and how wrong it is to complain about them because it's not nice.

Number 3, there's always someone who hates midwives and can't see it from their point of view.