To say postnatal wards are the least conducive environment for a mum/baby recovery

[cheesemumma]

Currently sitting on a ward at 11.30pm. 6th night. No exaggeration I think in total I must have had 4 hours sleep. My physical and mental health is suffering. I'm going to have to talk to the Drs tomorrow and say we're going home whatever, as we're getting more ill staying. Its not just the other selfish fucker couples that decide to talk on phone /watch films/ have conversations with each other but the staff seem to not give 2 shits it's the middle of the night. I realise my tiredness and hormones are a big contributing factor but I can feel a full tantrum /meltdown coming on. It's also 10000000 degrees and the enviable screaming babies plus the fact you get 3 teeny portions of food a day so I'm really hungry as ebf.

How do we flag this for MN to consider a campaign, the ideas please?

@CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook all of the toilets and showers on the post natal ward had signs stating they were for patients only. Many Male partners ignored the signs and did whatever they wanted. Staff did not challenge them. IT was horrible being so vulnerable in a hospital gown and bleeding only for a strange man in his boxers to stroll into the shower befor me. You get the impression that no one is safeguarding women on a maternity ward

You get the impression that no one is safeguarding women on a maternity ward
Thats because theyre not. However its a terrible shame maternity cant be the one place where womens needs are put first.

The problem with allowing men to sleep on wards is they are going to be using the same washing facilities as women.

I am really glad my hospital hasn't gone down that road. I found it bad enough sleeping on a children's ward with a Dad at the bed opposite DC. He had as much right to be there as me but....I wasn't exactly comfortable with it and I wasn't a vulnerable lady who'd just given birth.

My hospital had a men's shower on the ward.

I trained in the 70s, in a rural town, smallish hospital.
In those days you had to be a qualified nurse with one year post qualification experience before doing midwifery.
First time mums stayed in for a week, 10 days if c section or complicated delivery.
Day 1 all mums got all meals in bed. CS mums got all meals in bed until they felt able to get up.
Visiting was 1 hour in the afternoon and one in the evening. 2 visitors per mum and no children.
The ward was closed for an hour after lunch. Nobody was allowed in, not even the consultants.
We used to take babies to the nursery at night if mum asked.
Then I moved to London. Worked in a bigger hospital. They had just introduced open visiting from 3pm to 9 pm. It was absolute mayhem. Hordes of people bringing their picnics and kids. You couldn't get near the women to do their post natal checks, dressings, etc.
Things gradually got worse as midwives were replaced by cheaper, unqualified staff.
This myth that pregnancy is not an illness, that post natal women are not ill infuriates me.
I honestly think that respect and care in pregnancy and birth, together with peace and support in the first few months and years of life would do wonders for the physical and mental health of the population.

My cousin is a nurse and she’s told me many stories. She had spoken to a patient and then fed back the info to her manager in the morning meeting. The info from actually a couple of patients was that they were left “starving” the call bell wasn’t introduced to them so they didn’t even know it existed was probably down the back of the bed. And that they weren’t given any water on admission...

The manager said that she doesn’t believe that and she’s not concerned about it...

My cousin said to her that she actually got this info many times before but these two patients had really been upset so she wanted to feed it back. The manager embarrassed her and made out she was a liar. She came home crying apparently.

This myth that pregnancy is not an illness, that post natal women are not ill infuriates me
Most PN women aren't ill though, they might need rest and support with caring for their babies, but they aren't ill.

MN do have a Better Postnatal Care campaign. Could do with a boost: www.mumsnet.com/campaigns/better-postnatal-care

YAB a bit U. Certainly, they're not the best environments for recovery, and I was going stir crazy at the end of my 4 day stay with no sleep because the lady in the next bed thought having loud conversations all night with her 2 visitors was ok . I did have a full on tantrum about this

That said, I know I wouldn't have coped if I wasn't there. I was very poorly, as was baby, and if it wasn't for the midwifes and HCAs I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have a milk supply to speak of at the moment, let alone a strong bond with my LO.
Having such ready access to physio etc was invaluable too- it was a traumatic and complicated birth.

It's easy for me to say that on reflection though I know it's bloody hard when you're there!

Pregnancy is still a risky condition. Women have anaemia, sickness, spd, hypertension, diabetes, cardiac problems, complicated and traumatic deliveries, abdominal surgery. Throwing them onto a postnatal ward and telling them to shift for themselves is ignorant and barbaric.
For every woman who sales through an easy pregnancy and birth, there will be another for whom it has been exhausting and debilitating.
Labour isn't called labour for nothing. Women need and deserve care.
I had HG in my pregnancies. I honestly thought I might die. Being told to put up with it, because pregnancy isn't an illness, by a male doctor was not helpful.
I had awful perineal injuries after my first delivery. So many stitches it took an hour to be sutured. I could barely move for days. Luckily I was discharged early due to shortage of beds. If anyone other than a post natal woman had those injuries they would be considered to need proper care.

The pregnancy isn't a disease is just an excuse to treat pregnant and postpartum women like shit. We should have more respect for childbirth.

After the way I was treated during my first labour and post partum I now refuse to take advice from nurses and midwives seriously, I do not allow them to address me informally using my first name (they don't adress the consultants as John, Sally, Doc or Love) and a nurse will never ever examind me internally again, not even for a smear. I'd rather pay my gynaecologist £450. Interestingly my gynaecologist has confided that nursing and midwifery standards have declined significantly over the last 30 years and old fashioned nursing skills are now thin on the ground. He is semi, retired and in his early 70s now.

What has gone wrong with healthcare - I don't think it's all about resources, much of it is about kindness, common sense and basic good manners.

I was on the post natal ward for 4 nights and it was hell.
I had already been in for 6 nights due to monitoring for my pre eclampsia, failed induction when preeclampsia progressed and emcs. So already precious little sleep and not feeling great.
The first night I physically couldn't move to get my baby as spinal still wearing off and catheter in. I had to listen to ds scream whilst no-one came for 20/30 mins after I pressed the call button and then acted like we were a major inconvenience when they did. The third time I was handed ds and told that if he was going to be "like that" I'd just have to hold him. I spent the rest of the night sat upright holding ds and trying to feed him. At 6am someone finally put him back in his cot and I had 1 hour sleep.
Ds was struggling to feed and had jaundice. Nobody helped with me breastfeeding other than to stare at me for 30s and tell me that he would get the hang of it. He didn't.
Eventually a paedatrician came and told me that ds was not getting enough milk, I needed to feed him more and if I couldn't do that he'd be taken away from me and fed with a tube (and that was exactly how she said it!)
Except I had no idea how to feed him more as he fell asleep every time he was put to the breast.
Fortunately after I ended up crying hysterically and saying I was going to get some formula, a nice midwife fetched me a breast pump. At 3 days old ds put both hands on the bottle and drained it dry! Things got slightly better from then on and we were discharged day 5 (but not till 7pm despite being told we could go after breakfast, apparently it took that long to do the discharge papers!) We were never able to successfully establish breast feeding and ended up switching fully to formula at 8 weeks as expressing constantly got too much for me.
It was horrendous and I believe a major factor in me getting pnd.......

Oh my god, you are totally right. I thought it was just me that couldn’t cope with it- but it was a living nightmare, and I think definitely hugely contributed to me getting pnd/ ptsd. I was put on a ward with 8 other women and their babies at 1 at night- after my baby had just been rushed to scbu, and I’d had an EMCS. I spent the whole night wide awake and wondering if I had hallucinating the whole birth. Midwife asked me if I wanted to express milk for my baby at 3am (after I’d been awake for three days and just had major surgery) but didn’t give me any indication at all as to how I’d do that (I was a ftm). The next night, I tried to get some sleep but was woke every hour by the nurse topping up my drip. I could barely move for the pain but no one came when I rang the bell to help me get up for the toilet, so I had to wet the bed. At about 4 in the morning a call came through from scbu telling me that if I wanted to breastfeed i had to come to the unit now. With no assistance, I hobbled over down the hall and to my baby (who I was feeling extremely disconnected from). I sat on a hard plastic chair in the middle of scbu, trying to breast feed my ten pound baby, in excruciating pain from my section and getting no help from staff. I just remember quietly sobbing and thinking, I’m never going to get through this. Then the nurse told me that my baby couldn’t leave until he was feeding properly and I thought- I’m never getting out of here. The next day as soon as my husband came in, I had an utter breakdown and begged him to take me home. I have never felt so desolate in my entire life. I got myself discharged (also, midwives saw all this and no one raised any concerns over my mental health) and got home, where I felt safe for the first time since I’d gone into labour. My baby came out of hospital a week later- and then began a terrifying spiral into severe PND which, nine months later, I’m only just coming out of. There were a lot of contributing factors, but I’m sure that if only I’d have felt taken care of by staff, and safe, a lot of this might have been a lot easier on me

Oh the roses I think some of the decline must partly be because back in the day people qualified as general nurses then went on to specialise in various sectors.
Now they specialise from the beginning.

Work that was previously done by Doctors is now done by nurses. There is nobody to do the stuff that nurses used to do.

women have died as a result of this neglect. Last year, a women was transferred from the Borders region of Scotland to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary as she had delivered prematurely due to pre-eclampsia. Yet this woman was allowed to leave the postnatal unit alone to make her way to the NICU alone to visit her baby son. Her absence was not noted for seven hours! By which time she was found dead in a disused stairwell from brain haemorrhage. No one had been monitoring this woman's condition, which had obviously worsened to the point that she had cerebral issues. She is dead, leaving behind 2 young children.

That's horrific, I'd never heard about that in the news, in a major city too... Was it reported well at the time?

A Google shows there are some news articles but why is a totally unmanaged maternal death not MAJOR news?!?

Also, if my husband hadn’t been there during the day, no one would have got me food/ taken me for a wee, there were literally no staff

Stillbirths and neonatal deaths are rising. This must, at least in part, be due to falling standards of care.
I am just reading an article in today's paper about this.

Endof And to rising poverty and poor living conditions.

Which paper endof ?

OP and everyone on here I completely share your utter despair at PN wards and my experience echoes most here. Horrendously hot (I came around from the GA for emcs and had a claustrophobia induced panic attack from the heat. Never had one before!). They wouldn't let me open a window. I had to ask for the lights off at night (there were 2 of us in a 4-bay ward), and the staff kept turning them back on. I was bed-bound and the HCAs acted pissed off I couldn't get up (WTF?!) every time I buzzed. They told me to 'tidy up' my stuff even though I couldn't move. Overall I just couldn't get over the poor attitude from staff and the idea that the mums' comfort and wellbeing was so unimportant. They told me I couldn't go home until I'd stopped taking painkillers, so I did (they w we ent specific about which ones) and I discharged myself as soon as my catheter was taken out. When they were giving me the anti-clotting injections to take home, they were surprised I had refused paracetamol and ibuprofen. Apparently they 'hadn't meant those painkillers'

DC2 is due in a few months. I'm bloody dreading it.

Sunday Telegraph.
Just a small piece about making complaints.

And yes, I agree about poverty etc too. The last hospital I worked in had a large number of refugees.
We had so many women admitted who had no antenatal care. Midwives were seeing things they had only read about. Shocking.
But the thing is, with cuts in services, untrained staff, overcrowding, staff shortages, plus poor living conditions, we are going to see this kind of thing more and more. Not just among recent refugees. It is just not acceptable in a developed country.

Allowing direct entry midwives has played a huge part in this. Along with general lowering of standards