To think that Health visitors are a certain annoying breed generally?

[Moomin8]

I've just had my 4th baby and the health visitor came the other day. I found her really annoying and rude. First of all she came walking into my living room in her dirty boots and got mud all over my newly cleaned carpet.

My youngest before dc4 is 10 years old and the HV said she was going to therefore talk to me as if I'd never actually had a baby she also wanted to look in my bedroom - I told her no.

Then I thought back to my older dc and their HVs and realised they are all pretty much the same whereas midwives, when they visit are really nice and helpful usually and don't speak to you as though you're an idiot. I'm a 39 year old university educated person and I find these people intrusive and annoying.

What is it with health visitors?

@Rubyroost I’m not sure I understand how you think health visitor can help the children who are being abused if they don’t assess all children and families? Or are you saying to save families the inconvenience of being seen by a health visitor those children being abused should just be left to fend for themselves?

Are you aware how many children in England and Wales are currently on a child protection plan or looked after? And that research by the nspcc shows for every child we know about there’s another 11 suffering abuse without any authorities knowing ?
Honestly, it’s just about keeping vulnerable children and women safe. And supporting people to be healthy. If you really don’t feel you need it you just have to decline the service.

@OhTheRoses I hope I don’t patronise women. And I really don’t think it matters that I’m not a mother but I do find your comment offensive. There are services out there which provide peer supporters ie other mothers which is very helpful. But that’s not what health visiting is about.

Would you only accept oncology care from a nurse who had had cancer?

I've not had a problem with any of the HV I've had, or have seen me. They've all been helpful, checked that me and children were ok, asked after DH etc I've never known anyone more supportive

How can you decline the HV service without the threat of a SS referral?

I had one neutral experience and one awful one. The neutral one was just box-ticking according to some questionnaire, the awful one was very similar to what was already described previously on the thread. I was separated from the baby's father at that point, and the level of questioning about it and assuming I must lead some sort of a marginalised lifestyle was unbelievable (I was in my 30's, in a good professional job, with own house etc).
I had some health related questions for both, and received advice to book an appointment with a GP to discuss. I still cannot understand what was the value added by this service.
A friend is a qualified paediatrician (which the HV knew), and she was lectured by a HV on her child's unacceptable weight gain, and reprimanded that she does not turn up for the baby weighting clinic.

@panamapattie if there are no safeguarding concerns then there should be no talk of a referral to children services. You should be able to say you don’t feel you need the service . Your child will be offered developments checks still and you can decline each time. If a referral to children’s services is threatened I would encourage you to ask what the concern is, if it is just that you have declined the hv service then you would have grounds to complain as health visiting is not a compulsory service. Rest assured that declining a health visiting service would not meet the threshold for children’s services anyway but if you are being threatened with that please complain. It should never be said as a threat.

No I wouldn't only accept oncology care from a nurse who had had breast cancer but in my experience oncology nurses are a bit more switched on and hands on when it comes to providing care and are significantly more empathic and understanding than the HVs I have come across. They are in fact some of the very best nurses one can deal with.

The obstetrician who led my care when I had dd hadn't had a baby, he was a man but he was a professionally qualified man with decades of experience and was amazing.

There is something deeply vulnerable and initimate about the relationships a new mother needs from a pastoral/social perspective and actually I don't think that need can be met from someone who isn't also a mother.

May I ask, do you not think it was a little offensive that my HV asked if I needed help applying for benefits. Especially when the HV had just completed the paperwork with our occupations and was sitting in our house.

My HV seemed on alert for PND and domestic abuse. It must be their job but it is jarring for me. My tactic with ds (my second child and by far wiser to their ways) is to smile and nod, do NOT engage.

'You should come and see me and sleep train your child' - smile and nod
"You should eat more cakes and biscuits so your breast milk is richer" - smile and nod
"You can sometimes feel sad" - smile and nod.

The first HV was out of her depth with my dd who was born with a serious heart condition. If only she would not send me and dd to wait at A&E for 4 hours because my dd did not gain weight at the weigh-in. The doctors at A&E was disgusted with her arse-covering. That was the HV who told me eat more fatty foods so my breast milk is richer. What an idiot. Dd was my first so I thought all this is normal 'supportive' stuff but actually she was panicking at my expense. Last I heard she is now working at a school. Thankfully, her old wives tales can do less damage there.

This is an old article now but it rang true when it was written and I suspect things have got worse. I'll contact the organisation if I get time and see if there's an update:

www.aims.org.uk/journal/item/health-visitors-or-health-police

“The obstetrician who led my care when I had dd hadn't had a baby, he was a man but he was a professionally qualified man with decades of experience and was amazing”

I am professional qualified with decades of experience . What’s the difference? You had a bad experience with a bad health visitor, it doesn’t mean we are all like that.

“There is something deeply vulnerable and initimate about the relationships a new mother needs from a pastoral/social perspective and actually I don't think that need can be met from someone who isn't also a mother.”

You Think only mothers can show new mothers empathy? Wow. Childless women really are devalued by so many.

I’m not continuing this conversation or this thread. I know that as a health visitor I helped many people based on the cards I received and the requests for more visits and contacts. I know I made a difference and helped people and that is what means so much to me that in their most vulnerable time I was able to make things slightly easier.

My first HV I had at home was great. Listened to my concerns re DS and referred me for feeding support with BFing but also told me that if it wasn’t working that formula was a good option to. That I needed to do what was best for me and DS and that didn’t necessarily mean continuing to BF at any cost. I needed to hear that as all the support I had had before that kept telling me breast is best and made me feel that doing anything else was a failure. Unfortunately she left a week later for a new post. Haven’t met my new HV- just a few contacts via the phone. She has made me feel awful for my decision to move to the bottle full time despite it being a combination of expressed and formula. I know I’ve done the right thing and my GP has even said so after seeing me pre bottle and post bottle that DS is more settled and I appear less anxious. I know there are some great ones out there. Just find it frustrating to be told that I’m not doing the best for my son by someone who hasn’t met me and hasn’t seen what things were like for us.

To be perfectly fair, if you aren't a mother yet and had to spend three years qualifying as a nurse and then convert to being an HV and then complete a masters whilst expecting at some time in the future to be a mother as you said upthread, you cannot possibly have decades of experience.

I didn't say only mothers can show new mothers empathy. I said and you quoted "There is something deeply vulnerable and initimate about the relationships a new mother needs from a pastoral/social perspective and actually I don't think that need can be met from someone who isn't also a mother.” Becoming a mother is a rite of passage - to make that journey successfully requires the stewardship of other mothers. HV's overstep the mark of stewardship at the most vulnerable time and I do not think that vulnerability can be understood by somebody who is not a mother. That is a statement of opinion and had I had any choice in appointing my HV she would not have been a single woman without children. Relationships and new babies are complex - far more complex than an clinical illness if not as intellectually demanding from a genetic/pharmacological point of view, etc.

feelinggoodashel I am sure you are a much better and more self aware hv than I had but it is important to acknowledge the awful experiences some women have endured and those experiences aren't that unusual.

I think I must be lucky because all my HVs spanning over 3 children have been great- all very different women but generally lovely.

Midwives have been very hit and miss- either absolutely wonderful (including one or two I’ll always remember for being stars) or dreadful/rude/patronising. Ditto obstetricians- I had a lovely consultant during my last pregnancy but have come across some who are borderline rude, patronising and seem to have a worrying grasp of consent and women’s autonomy.

I think when you’re pregnant/new mum it really is the luck of the draw which health professionals you end up with. It’s a shame because they can really make or break the experience and the way your journey to motherhood goes.

Poppet absolutely. I was put in exactly the same position. Breast is best in absolute terms but that absolute has also to take account of the holistic needs of mother and baby and the difference or bestness in the first world is infinitesimal.

I failed first time and it upset me for years and I felt I had deprived my son largely due to the comments of an HV. However, fast forward 25 years and both my DC have achieved equally academically; they have both had bad ears, they have both had a bit of eczema, they both had bronchiolitis. DD was breastfed until she was 9 months and if anything is the less robust of the two.

Occasionally I have said to DS I didn't feed him and regretted it. He has snorted and said "so what" I can't remember, doesn't both me.

What your children will remember are their favourite dinners, you watching their first goal, them as a shepherd with a tea-towel on their head, wiping the blood from their first graze, wiping their tears upon their first break-up. They will remember the warmth and the love of having a mother, not whether their mother gave them breast milk too often weeping with the pain of doing so.

I have declined.
But they don't have hvs or equivalent in some other European countries and in many cases the amount of abuse is lower

I wasn't even a little bit bothered about being asked about domestic violence as I think this is one area where a hv really could be a fantastic opportunity for someone to open up.

Although, it's slightly disconcerting that at almost every interaction with midwives and hvs they tended to ask the question half heartedly and do a nervous laugh whilst saying 'of course I'm sure that doesn't apply to you'. In my case it didn't apply but I remember thinking that it felt like if I had actually needed help they were actually making it harder to ask for it with that approach, not easier. I really think their hearts were in the right place but they weren't confident enough about handling that part of the interaction. I hope training has improved over time and they aren't so apologetic now.

Rubyroost
How do you know the amount of abuse is lower?

Because the countries I am thinking have lower stats in terms of death from abuse etc.

I'm in a Flying Start area and our HV's have been fabulous

I moved a fair bit when my twins were tiny, only coming to the UK when they were 4 months old and had 3 health visitors in 6 months. I only saw them at the baby clinic because our living situation was such that it would have been a bit rude to our host to invite them to our initial accommodation. By the time we were settled somewhere of our own I was so pissed off with the last one I didn't want her anywhere near my home.

The first two were nice and helpful, a bit too sure of themselves and dismissive of my knowledge but not rudely so. They were generally helpful and friendly without being patronizing. Not super up on twin research when I asked questions but had looked things up by the time I went back. Which is, to my mind, probably better than them trying to drag up what they could remember of whatever esoteric question each mum had each week. They were both part of the same team of HVs but I was only in that area for a month.

The third HV was attached to the GP clinic in the area we found permanent accommodation in. She was patronising, downright rude to everyone around her and of no use to me whatsoever. I ended up using the GP for things I really think the HV should have been able to handle but I had no confidence in the HV. She spent her whole time telling me she had to visit my home, which just made me not want her anywhere near it. I kept going to the clinic because my twins were very low on the weight charts and the GP wanted to make sure they didn't fall off, but it was not a highlight of my day.

I went along to the two year check up (run by the same HV group but not my HV). They were equally patronizing, talking to the parents as though they were 15 year olds in school.

We then moved to another area and I didn't hear from the HV team in that area until my twins were 6. My new GP hadn't informed them I'd moved to the area so they hadn't got in touch for three and a half years. When they did I asked what they could do for me now and they couldn't think of anything. I don't know why they called other than so they could say they had.

Apart from the first two, my experience of the service was that it was a box-ticking exercise. In retrospect, I think I probably developed pnd or some other form of depression, something that real engagement by an HV might have picked up. I do wish the first two had been available to me after I moved (I only moved 1.5 miles, but over a border so new HV).

@Feelinggoodashell

“ While it may feel patronising or needless for the hv to ask certain things, in the majority of cases they do not know you and are just trying to do their best to ensure children are safe. Why is that so awful?”

If you can’t understand why women at one of their most vulnerable moments, when their bodies half don’t belong to them, when they’re getting no sleep don’t want to be patronised by some strange person coming to their own house and treating them like a little child, then there’s no help, isn’t it? Are you ever going to get it? That the most professional advice is worth nothing when a bit of understanding and knowledge of what a new mother is going through- and that the said new mother wants to be treated like an intelligent adult?
A huffy patronising person who’s looking for another tick in the box on her long sheet of visits while turning her nose at yet another disobedient and disorderly silly creature she needs to lecture on supplementing with formula because the baby’s legs don’t have enough fat folds even though it doesn’t appear hungry and how not to spoil the child by immediately responding to its crying is never a good answer and their attitude is typical of the patriarchy we live in where women still need to be treated with contempt, their biological functions tightly controlled and they shown that someone else should manage their bodies and ability to be a mother.

Seeing where a baby sleeps is very necessary to risk assess safe sleeping. When a baby dies of SIDS the health visiting records are scrunitised to see if they discussed SIDS and saw the baby’s sleeping area due to it being a Factor in SIDS.

Can you not see how this statement seems to be all about the hv and not at all about the mother? 'I want to see your bedroom so that I can prove I'm not to blame.' So if a mother refuses to let a hv into her bedroom and then a baby dies of SIDS, is the mother somehow at fault? Discussing safe sleeping, yes, I understand, of course a hv should do that. But if a hcp asks me where my baby sleeps and I say in a moses basket beside my bed, I expect that to be accepted. Why are new mothers treated as being liars unless proven otherwise? No other area of healthcare is approached in this way, and I can't think of a single situation where men are treated like this, only women.

I've just remembered another gem that another friend had. She and her husband had been living with family whilst their house was built. When she was in hospital the purchase went through so she came out of hospital to a brand new new build house. Unsurprisingly, it had not yet been decorated, on account of how you can't arrange for a house to be carpeted and painted until you actually own it and have the keys to it. They were awaiting delivery of furniture, which again takes time. But they had a bed for themselves and a moses basket. HV lectured her on her unsuitable living conditions and wrote a list of all the 'improvements' she needed to see by her next visit, which was basically that she wanted to see all the rooms decorated and furnished.

@Feelinggoodashell instead of being offended by women reporting awful health visitors, you should be offended by the number if your colleagues who are frankly incompetent and do more damage than good.
nobody can report them as nobody has proof. change can only come from the inside!

@myself2020 and the worst thing is that they describe it as a witch hunt and once again talk about mothers like some stupid mob that needs to be lectured on responsibility. Talk about DV etc. The thing is, if you approach every mother as a potential victim of DV and handle it in a patronising way they do, they’re only putting women off.
Because what’s the next step? Genuine concern and help for the mother or simply referring the family to Social Services, i.e. yet another bureaucratic treadmill? The latter I would say especially as the defenders of the HVs on this thread pointed out that the HV only has the interest of the child in mind, not the mother.