Good luck!!!
(I never saw the same midwife twice and had terrible care throughout my pregnancy. They missed gestational diabetes which effected my baby a lot. They also missed that he was breech and back to back, in spite of me asking at every appointment and getting ignored because I didn’t know what I was talking about because it was my first pregnancy. Getting told off when I questioned why my blood pressure hadn’t been taken though it had been falsely recorded as fine etc.
Because he was ginormous, and in the wrong place, and I have a (serious) chronic illness, the absence of care could have killed me and DS. It was thankfully all picked up when I saw my one and only actual competent midwife at the birth centre on my due date who took one look at me and said ‘well something isn’t right here love, let’s take a look at you...’ Thank God for her. Though what followed wasn’t pretty, was bloody awful actually.
Because that’s why we have antenatal care, to stop these kind of situations from developing. It was like I’d just pitched up at 40weeks having had no care whatsoever, in spite of all my efforts to get any help earlier. The neglect did damage at the time, at the birth, recovery & newborn stage and in fact its still ongoing years later.
However, it would be very wrong to blame this on the lack of continuity of care. I’d have just been stuck with one of those uncaring, unprofessional midwives instead of seeing the whole ‘team’ of them. I’ve no doubt the unkindness and unprofessionalism would have continued.
I say ‘team’, it wasnt a team, the midwives clearly loathed each other, openly bitching and sniping, and most were agency as staff retention was apparently so incredibly low (no shit Sherlock, I wonder why!).
There was clearly an issue with the culture and working conditions of the midwifes associated with that hospital / location. And I rather think any good, competent midwife would have either been long gone, or off sick.
The key to good midwifery is, good midwives. And good midwifes flourish when they are treated well.
Make conditions impossible and good midwifes are driven out of the system.
Leaving behind what I experienced. No woman or baby should ever go through what I did, or worse. I suspect we were lucky, because we both lived through it.