Maternity ward etiquette?

[greenfooted]

I suspect I am. On a maternity ward of four after c section two days ago. Baby opposite is a screamer. Has been doing so on and off all day . It's now 3 am. I have had no sleep. My baby wakes every time other baby screams. So is in my arms ( so I can't sleep). There are two of them with screaming baby. Aibu to think at some stage one of them should take it for a walk/ to the day room. I am on own as DH with our other kids so feeling pretty uncharitable and grumpy....even when DH was hear earlier this baby screamed through my earplugs...

Maternity is a very different experience to elsewhere in the hospital. I'd had two operations before I was pregnant and each time had received excellent care - everything fully explained in advance (unlike with maternity!), kind and sensible staff who were very helpful. I was also in a bay of beds on both of those occasions but the staff did their utmost to maintain privacy and also to ensure we got rest overnight. Visiting hours were restricted, again, unlike maternity where it was a free for all.

The people kept in overnight on maternity are more likely to have had problems and be recovering from something beyond a normal birth so reducing staffing levels and making them care for their own babies is barbaric.

It has occurred to me that I may have been the woman with the screamer at one point - by my third night on postnatal I was so knackered I slept through my baby howling next to me (so much for rooming in encouraging bonding!) and was shaken awake by an angry midwife who told me to get on with feeding the baby. No offer to help or asking if I was ok!

suzielou this was your original post

No you are not being unreasonable. If a new mum can’t settle her baby then she should ask for help from the midwives and auxiliary staff who are on hand to teach her her how to meet her babies needs

There are no staff, or there are very few staff to a large number of women and they are overworked and unable to provide thw level of care you're suggesting.

She should do whatever it takes to keep her baby from screaming and disturbing others. Babies cry because they need their mothers to do something not just for the sake of it.

How? If you done everything? Fed, burped, changed, swaddled, shushed, rocked, loved? And you've never dealt with a baby before, and there's nobody to help. And you've just given birth so you've been up for three days

New mums should think of others not just themselves. It’s a difficult time and you need sleep. Very selfish of the other mums to let their babies scream and not take them to a quiet place to sort them out.

Do you think, that these terrible selfish mothers wouldn't rather their babies were happy, soothed and quiet? No, they're selfish, course they are. And if they can't walk, cause they've had a spinal? Or still attached to a catheter? Or have stitches from arsehole to breakfast time? Or have numb hands from carpal tunnel? Or can't lift their baby?

That is what I'm referring to when I say you're talking bollocks. And shows a ridiculous lack of empathy on your part. I am not bitter or angry (hilarious that you think I am though), and I wouldn't expect you to lose any sleep (odd sentiment really)

It's an internet forum and I disagree with you. That's the start and end of it

If you want a private room, away from the wards, tell the midwife you have diarrhea. They must put you immediately into a private room (en suite) for the health and safety of other patients on the ward. I did it when I was admitted with pre-eclampsia.
I did actually have diarrhea, and was promptly moved. I never told them it was just a wee bit and never had any more after 😁 So nobody has to suffer the ward if they don't want to x

I say be grateful you don't have to take the screaming one home, the poor mum may be stuck with it screaming for weeks or months, whereas you will have it for a few days max. My daughter was a constant screamer, the first few months were miserable

Forgive me if I’m getting this wrong but if something happened in the middle of the night and the mother had to be moved to resus surely the baby wouldn’t be left by the empty space where the mother had been?

Since when did post-natal wards become hellholes? My DIL was in labour for 3 days, no sleep really, then transferred to a tiny ward with 6 Mums and babies (only large enough for 4 max!) - hot, noisy, constant interruptions, hardly any staff, pressure to get feeding right before leaving (which was NOT going to happen), nowhere for DS - who stayed with her for whole labour and 2 days after birth- to rest. So he was awake solidly for about 4 days, apart from tiny, 20 min naps in a chair.

It was all pretty ghastly. Fortunately DIL's Mum and I joined forces and insisted to staff that Mum and baby were ready to go home and they let her go, very reluctantly.

Very different to when I had DSs. Large, airy ward plenty of space, plenty of staff, could have stayed there a week - would have been a nice break!

Suzielou66 Fri 05-Oct-18 15:33:38
EyeUpOurKid
RidingMyBike
babycatcher411
'Why can’t we express our opinions without being attacked because those opinions differ from someone else’s?'

Ha ha ha ha. You're kidding right? You've called mothers selfish, you've been beyond judgey, you persist in 'correcting' other people's experiences (including an ACTUAL midwife), you've demonstrated rank stupidity in asserting that the 'only' reason babies cry is if their mother isn't meeting their needs (clearly nada experience of colic then) and being flat out nasty. And you're calling OTHER people out?!!

Frickin deluded post

My DD had an EMCS with her DD1 and went into transitional care as baby was born at 36.4 weeks so technically ore term and my DD had pre eclampsia and my DGD. Had feeding issues. They were brilliant and DD had a private room and lots of support.

3 years later at same hospital when pregnant with her DD2 she was admitted at 35.4 weeks with pre eclampsia and stayed on maternity ward in private room until she had ECS at 37 weeks. Returned to maternity main ward where women are in early stages of labour, new mums with babies screaming, noisy inconsiderate partners making loud phone calls etc. She discharged herself early as she was getting no support from the midwives and she could not rest.

I was admitted at 34 wks with pre-eclampsia and wangled a private room (see my previous post lol). The private room was brilliant!! My blood pressure was out of control and had to get blood pressure profiles during the day and through the night. This was my DP's first child and he was terrified something would go wrong - so he stayed over night in the room with me. He was with me through the night after I was induced too up until I had our DD and I got transferred to the postnatal ward and he was told he had to go home!! Our daughter was a month early, not regulating her temperature or blood sugar levels very well and not feeding and he was told he couldn't stay cause there were other women on the ward!!
Unfortunately I wasn't cheeky enough to play the diarrhea card twice haha. I was very tempted tho!!
I had to stay on the ward for a week cause my blood pressure wouldn't come down and every night my man was told to leave!!

Quite a few mothers and their babies came and went, quite a few screamers. Fortunately my DD was a quiet baby - or perhaps I quickly tried to comfort her for fear of being the mum of the screamer. There was only 1 mum who I think we all thought was dreadful. Her DS cried all the time, but she would just angrily tell him to shut up and let her sleep!! One night she walked right by his crib and left the ward for about 15 minutes, the new mum opposite had to go comfort the little boy!!

My biggest bugbear about the ward... the midwives who just fling your curtain open while your boobs are out and you are trying to either latch your baby or worse - squeezing colostrum out by hand while trying to catch it into a syringe and everyone's visitors all see!!! I know they say dignity goes out the window when you have kids but that's just unfair!! Happened to me loads and the woman next to me was braver than me and complained about it!

We are trying for DC2 and when it happens I will be playing the diarrhea card rather than be put back in a cubicle!! Ha!! Rant over 😌 I hope you all had beautiful healthy babies 💖 xx

@Suzielou - I'm a midwife and I'm sure my friends would say the same about me that you've said about got friend: that I often stay late, work through breaks, go above and beyond etc. But the fact is, with NHS staffing the way it is, you can work flat put on a shift and not stop to pee or take a sip of water in 12 hours, and still only manage to cover the absolute essentials. Working on a postnatal ward is just fighting fires all shift long. We might have 16 patients each, and each patient on a different regimen of meds, observations etc. Add in (entirely reasonable and legitimate) requests for help with feeding, help getting out of bed, help changing the nappy, "is this normal?" type questions, patients who don't feel well, patients who suddenly become unwell and need urgent attention, and so on and so on and so on... that the midwives can do their absolute best and the women can still have an utterly shit time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

And no - NHS hospitals do not have nurseries for babies whose mums need a little break. Many midwives' friends have all sorts of misconceptions about what maternity care entails. I say this with no malice, but this might be one of yours.

Everything gulliver said was reflected in my experience. The midwives during my week’s stay on the postnatal ward were amazing - but it was absolute chaos. Easily one midwife to 16 patients or more.

Maternity wards don’t seem set up to allow anyone to get any rest. I had two days of labour then an EMCS then a baby that was awake feeding all night, and of course there was no safe way to cosleep so that was me awake all night too. During the day it was a constant stream of noisy visitors, husband of the woman in the next bed never stopped talking, lights had to be on and all curtains pulled back.

There was an hour in the mornings that was visitor-free and that’s when the sodding Bounty reps came round.

When I’ve been kept in on a surgical ward for anything else there has been an expectation that patients need to rest and recover. But in maternity, although the midwives were great and I got all the help I needed with breastfeeding and baby-handling in the early hours, there was no rest. It was more like: well you’ve all had babies now, so your recovery matters less than letting someone’s 12-person extended family arrive with a whooping parade of pastel helium balloons and camp out loudly celebrating for the day.

The hospital where I’ll be having my next has recently moved to all-day visiting hours and is talking about letting dads/partners stay overnight too. I am dreading it.

"I was talking to a friend about how it used to be and we both said that we were so well looked after we didn't want to go home! I doubt you'd hear anyone say that now. "

Actyally, once moved to a private room, if say that, and several of my friends choose to stay longer though were offered discharge. The food was great, and I must have picked a quiet time, as I think there were just a handful of us on the ward, so staffing levels were 1:2 or better most of the time. If the ward had been busy, it would have been very different I expect.

The first night wasn't so great, but that was because although my bit (section section!) was only me and one other, their baby cried all night. And that had nothing to do with staffing levels (my buzzer was always answered pretty much instantly), but because the baby was trying to feed. It's no one's fault, and even if baby had been in a nursery, if mum was breastfeeding, it would still have been brought to her, and still screamed for hours.

I had private rooms both times and did stay longer than I had to - mostly for help with breastfeeding. The second time I even transferred to a small community hospital (where I was the only one on the ward!) rather than home for an additional night/full day and more help. That was incredible - I had two midwives (one fully qualified, one student) and a HCA just looking after me! All three were completely lovely (baby struggled to feed and lost some weight) and helped me so much that even in the post birth blur I managed to write to say thank you. I don’t think I could have managed to breastfeed if it wasn’t for them.

Agree with PP about bf support. Despite the pressure they were under, I was so well supported (but not pushed) with bf.