To still be pissed off how I (and so many other women) are treated before/after birth?

[LyndzB]

How I was treated in hospital before and after the birth of my child still gets to me.

Things like...

1.when I'd had an epidural from a 3rd degree tear, I rang the nurses button for help. A nurse told me off and said I should've walked to reception as I wasn't ill. I had to explain I'd had an epidural.

1. Lying in blood stained sheets for 4 days, kept asking for fresh so I could change myself

1. Waiting 5 hours after birth for some food and water - couldn't move due to epidural

1. Being told my son was in NICU and they needed his vests. I had several bags with me and I couldn't for the life of me remember which one had vests in. I still couldn't move and the nurse got annoyed that I didn't know where they were. I'd just been told at that point he was in NICU and was worried sick.

I've read stories from women far worse than mine.

We just seem to accept it. Me included. I think we just want to get out, move on and enjoy our babies. But in the meantime nothing changes. I only see it getting worse.

The hard part is, it's difficult to criticise as I don't want to be seen criticising the nhs. I love the nhs. It's a wonderful invention. I know it's a funding issue and that nurses and doctors and porters and all staff are working so hard.

And I'm sure many women do have good experiences (as much as you can delivering a baby!)

I suppose I just want things to change for the better. I don't know where to start. And maybe it's just too much to ask for little old me!

Anyone else feel this way?

Similar experience to you OP with my first, which is why I chose a birth centre for my second and third. Completely different experience, they couldn’t do enough for me and let me stay as long as I needed

I had an awful time when in labour. I was in terrible pain (first baby so not sure what to expect) and had a midwife tell me to 'man up' when I said I was struggling and that 'labour hurts you know.' It turned out I had a urine infection which meant baby couldn't descend due to massive bladder. A new midwife diagnosed this straight away after I screamed the place down due to the pain from the baby pressing on my bladder, being back to back and trying to come down at a right angle!

After a horrible delivery with forceps, which caused my baby to suffer a facial palsy due to pressure from the blades, he was taken away, a cannula inserted and a tube down his throat for feeding, admitted to neo-natal without me there or even consulted and then I was put on a post labour ward with other ladies and their babies whilst mine was down the corridor.

He is an only child!

@LyndzB I had sections with both my deliveries and the experiences were both very different.

DS1 was an 11pm emergency section, DH was sent home whilst I was in recovery and I spent five hours alone on a the ward waiting for a spinal to wear off, I felt I had no support, judged by the staff and incredibly lonely. DH arrived the next day and I was tired, sore and unwashed still.

DS2 was a planned section at 9am, meaning my DH was able to stay with me until 8pm. I was up and showered when he left which psychologically made a huge difference.

The second time round I felt a lot more confident in voicing my opinions to nurses and midwives. Second time round though also involved DS being sent to another hospital in the middle of the night, without me and a short stay in NICU. Due to a miscommunication between staff that stay was 48 hours longer than I was told it would be and needed to be.

When you're scared and sleep deprived it's hard to communicate coherently and the comments from a certain nurse made me feel hopeless (I got teary and was given a lecture on PND, I didn't have PND, I was just really fucking upset that my baby was full of tubes and that a more senior staff member had told me that we could be discharged, this nurse disagreed). I was also frustrated that being so overwhelmed was interfering with my ability to communicate without bursting into tears.

I found support in the strangest places, the audiologist who came to do the hearing test gave me some brilliant feeding advice and really boosted my confidence again.

I do fully agree though that things could and should be different when it comes to the emotional support that women need. If I could make one change to the system it would be that birth partners could stay for at least the first 48 hours of your hospital stay.

I absolutely hated the postnatal ward, but the staff were lovely. Apart from the midwife and trainee assigned to me, who completely failed to explain their concerns about DS's feeding to me. They kept nagging me (that's how it felt) about feedingb him three-hourly and started really pushing the formula. The thing that really pissed me off was seemingly minor. I asked the trainee nurse to help me put on my support stockings (something DH and I had struggled with but the nurses were a dab hand at). She looked at me and said, "You'll be going home soon and will have to manage it with your husband's help, so I'm not able to help you with that". It was just so lacking in compassion and made me feel like a silly little girl for not managing myself. Honestly, I'd just had major surgery, asked the nursing staff to help me with something and they just downright refused. The HCA who barely looked at me when I had asked her to help me to the toilet when I was doubled up in pain from complications wasn't too great either, but at least I didn't have to see her again. With the benefit of hindsight I'd ask for a different midwife and not care what she thought of me. I'd have also demanded more explanation about their insistence on formula.

My experience was similar to those described above, blood soaked sheets in which my husband just went looking for bedding, requesting 3 times for catheter to be changed only for the midwife to sit on it. I gave birth at 4pm and was taken to the ward at 10pm so had nothing to eat. The next morning I asked for toast and cereal for breakfast and I was told it was one or the other. I opted for toast and it was put at the far end of my cubicle out of reach. It took me ages to get it as I'd had a 2nd degree tear and catheter in by which time I got to it she was back & grumpy as I hadn't finished it so she'd have to come back for my cup and plate.

I'm now pregnant again and have been having nightmares over going back to hospital. My midwife at a clinic said I should report to PALS because if they don't know they can't do anything to fix it. At the time I was just grateful for having had a healthy baby so it wasn't a priority but the birth and treatment in hospital was so bad I've now been diagnosed with PTSD. Obviously more happened than a bit of cold toast but the accumulation of poor treatment during and after the birth has resulted in this and it's just wrong because the staff were doing their best they were just so overstretched and now I'm using the NHS again to have treatment for the PTSD....

These stories are terrible. My own experience wasn't great either, though some staff were also good. Was in for a week and I feel I never could do that again. If my husband hadn't insisted on staying and getting a private room I'd have left in a hospital gown with a jaundiced baby and no antibiotics because that actually felt like the better option. How can we change this?

Direct entry midwives with zero nursing experience so no wonder post surgical care is non existent.

I had a pretty grim EMCS, but the thing that really stayed with me was a) being induced and having to stay on a ward with other people. There is something so weird about a man whose name you don’t even know watch you in labour. WTF. Am sure it contributed to it ending up in a C section. I wanted to be somewhere quiet and peaceful. B) the ward afterwards was awful. Four newborns in one room=no sleep for anyone. For five days. I found it genuinely traumatic. Plus there was a heatwave and you couldn’t open the windows and there was no air con. I know you’re not meant to criticise in the NHS but absolutely believe that being induced in front of randoms led to the whole spiral.

God, it was so so so awful. I was having panic attacks. It was hellish.

I had my daughter in 1997. I won’t go into detail but so much went wrong with her birth that I was given a hospital apology. All I will say is that since then, absolutely nothing has changed. I have heard countless stories of mismanaged labours and births.
I don’t think that the government/hospital trusts care much about childbirth as they view it as ‘natural’ and you just put up with it.

strawbmilk is there another hospital you could use? I swapped to another a little further away for my second, and it was a completely different experience. I felt much calmer just knowing I didn't have to go back in the first one again, which still gives me the heeby jeebies!

I am with you.

They didn't listen when I said I needed to push. Told me I just felt sick. As a result I was crowning with my knickers still on and suffered a 3rd degree tear as no time to do an episiotomy

They blamed me for a huge bleed after I'd had DD and had retained placenta because I didn't want the injection during stage 3 of birth. "If you just had that injection none of this would have happened. Lesson for the future young lady" (she said as I was shaking violently after losing 3.5 pints of blood)

Postnatal care was horrific- they let too many visitors in to see people, let partners stay until 10pm (despite partner visiting ending at 9pm), there was NO rest from other people, Male partners treated like heroes for bothering their arses to visit their baby

In postnatal ward they tried to force me to walk for my lunch after an epidural I'd had due to the 3rd degree tear. When I told them I can't walk they badgered me to do it anyway and refused to bring me my lunch. I had to fucking argue to bed fed after going through the most exhausting and physically difficult thing I've ever been through

Accused me of stealing a hospital thermometer. It was mine from home and I didn't get an apology when I proved it.

Got told off for changing baby's nappy on the bed despite my epidural meaning I couldn't stand to do it in the cot

No one helped me when I struggled to breastfeed. They just shrugged, offered formula (I said no) and walked away. Even when I was in tears, they said the breastfeeding supporter was too busy to see me

No attempts whatsoever to be quiet in the night. Nurses would bring new patients at 2am bellowing "here you go Lindsay here's your bed" waking everyone up.

Why indeed do we accept it? I think at the time we are knackered/happy our babies are ok/not feeling ourselves etc. We accept it because we've been conditioned to accept the subpar treatment women receive in every corner of their life. It's disgusting, I'm sure there are good midwives, I have met precisely one (who interestingly was a man and was incredibly empathetic, helpful and extremely kind and best of all he listened to me).

This needs to change.

I also experienced the same issues as others re. no food or drink provided after not eating for 24 hours and no breakfast the following day while I was still immobilised in bed. I realise they lack funding but essential care is... well, essential. Women are going to keel over if they don’t have food and drink after undergoing labour and surgery.

And we have to stop being afraid to speak out or "cause a fuss" or criticise midwives - saying nothing enables to the culture of bad care. And as a PP said, shouting at a woman in labour is not down to budget cuts - it's down to poor care by bad staff. We need to name the problem

How can we change this?

We can't. Successive Governments have repeatedly shown they don't give a stuff about women, they don't even care enough to even pretend to listen to us like they do about other public matters.

While the men continue to dominate politics and don't take measures to make it a less hostile environment for women nothing will change.

All parties are as guilty in this as each other.

These are so sad and unfortunately so predictable and echo my first experience.
Home birth for my second was an easy choice for me. No way I was sitting in hospital in my own blood being talked to like a child again ! Some of the bad bits of my first experience were due to complete lack of resources (no Mid wife at all available when I arrived so I was left in the corridor for over an hour) and some down to rude uncaring staff. A change is badly needed.

I've just realised that while I said I had nothing but good treatment when having my daughter, I actually got an official apology (unprompted) from the hospital about the way my c-section and subsequent haemmorage was handled (I had a cyst they'd seen on my early scans but forgotten about which had to be removed post-section unexpectedly meaning my spinal wore off during the surgery and I didn't see my baby for 4 hours, and then someone misread my chart and didn't order a transfusion when I'd lost almost 3l of blood so I was iron deficient for months before it was discovered which contributed to my PND). But that just shows the importance of kind and patient treatment because I don't consider it to be a negative experience purely because the midwives were all so wonderful.

Yes 100%.
I had a terrible time in hospital, was discharged too early, was exhausted at home, couldn’t breastfeed properly. The first days were awful.

Everyone I know who has given birth in public hospitals in Europe has had a much better experience in after care: dedicated, cozy birthing centers, 4-5 days aftercare, excellent and nutritious food, single rooms or with family bed for father to stay for tiny supplement, etc etc...

Criticising specific staff or specific practices or specific institutions for failures or inadequacies is not the same as criticising the concept of the NHS/universal healthcare.

If you care about the concept and want to protect it then we all have to push back against poor and abusive practices. Otherwise those who want to abolish universal healthcare are handed the gift of being able to point at the NHS and say "look at this terrible care people are receiving, we must privatise".

Turning a blind eye to the NHS's fuckups helps nobody.

I am not so sure this is about funding so much as management culture and attitudes. I have had two very positive experiences of hospital births (one in birthing centre part of hospital and one in the labour suite). Both times the same midwife stayed with me throughout, they were kind and supportive. I was offered lots of help (not all of actually that helpful admittedly) with breastfeeding and with DD2 the nurse actually took her away for a couple of hours so I could sleep. We need to see the same high standards which some hospitals offer consistently at all hospitals - kindness costs nothing.

This thread has made me cry. I'm so sorry for what you've all been through. And angry that I'm one of the lucky ones because I "only" had botched surgery and a haemmorage they forgot to treat. But everyone was nice to me so it's okay. We expect so little.

We've been brainwashed into never critiquing the NHS.. I've had/witnessed, good care, bad care, excellent care and downright disgusting care.

What I want for our NHS that is not actually free is.. '' consistent '' care.

Also it's definalty culture, structure.... Funding is not the sole issue.

And we have to stop being afraid to speak out or "cause a fuss" or criticise midwives - saying nothing enables to the culture of bad care. And as a PP said, shouting at a woman in labour is not down to budget cuts - it's down to poor care by bad staff. We need to name the problem

Yes yes.

And the good staff need to stop whingeing about supposed "nurse/midwife/doctor bashing" whenever poor staff are justly criticised. Any decent HCP should be supportive of bad staff being dealt with instead of derailing it.

The NHS is toxic. When I was giving birth (no other option as there were no private birthing options within reasonable driving distance), the only people who treated me the way health professionals where I come from do were the trainees. I don’t know exactly what the NHS does to its staff but it must be just as bad as the things the staff do to patients.