To not have to Be stressed on post natal ward?

[ifeeltheneedtheneedforsleep]

I had my baby earlier in the week and after a very traumatic delivery he's in SCBU while I'm on the post natal ward (trying to recover from emergency surgery AND going back and forth to be with baby).
The staff have been amazing so this is in no way a criticism of them but it is a criticism of the idiot pen pusher who no doubt deemed it a good idea to implement a policy allowing partners or friends or family to stay over with mothers on the post natal ward!
The ward is full tonight and it's like a freaking zoo! Next to me I've got a woman who has her mother staying who repeatedly rings the midwife asking for food, pillows, water etc etc for her MOTHER because you know, she's travelled a long way! I've lost count of the amount of times they've bashed through my curtain and sent everything flying!
Opposite is a woman who at the moment has a partner and his male friend (who the midwife is trying to evict to their protests about it being too late at night for him to leave) - they are busy watching bollywood movies on an iPad at full volume and have their own picnic going on so it's non stop crinkle, rustle munch munch on top of their cackling, loud chatting and movie!! That's just two or the finer examples but the rest are having full on conversations at nearly half past midnight!

Is it too much to ask to recover on a ward where you don't feel like you're in party central, where you can actually speak to the midwife about bleeding or leaky boobs without having just a curtain between you and some randoms? Or even to be able to change without worrying that some idiot is going to pull your curtain back because they've barged it constantly? 😡

Having a partner or one supportive person there outside visiting hours may be ok, but they should be there to help, certainly not to sit around annoying other people and certainly not making work for the staff. Anyone who isn't respectful of new mothers' need for sleep and privacy should be warned once and then ejected. (I'm not convinced by the need for anyone to stay overnight in general)

Ideally there should be more private rooms, so that if a mother wants a lot of people with her then they can rent one.

I remember my exh going a bit bewildered at the birth of our first, at 2 am. when we were taken to the ward at 3 am and he was asked to leave he said “but I’ve got nowhere to go”.

A quick reminder that we were in the middle of London and he could get a taxi was enough to bring him to his senses.
I guess if it’s very remote and the baby was born in the night there’s an excuse but otherwise it’s nonsense.

I had DD in a hospital where partners weren't allowed. I hated it, I had to leave DD to go to the toilet or get some water, no food or very bad food so I was constantly hungry until DH came and brought me supplies.

The ward was so noisy at night, I virtually didn't sleep for the two nights I was there (DD was born at 8pm). The midwives/nurses weren't helpful but that may have been because they were understaffed. When DD brought up blood with her milk noone told me anything and as it was outside visiting hours DH wasnt' there to help me asking for her when they just whisk her away for tests.

The two days were a nightmare. The only other time I was in a hospital was when I had surgery done on my knee in a private one, the differences were staggering.

If the NHS wants people to recover they need to throw money on the wards to have better rooms.

That's awful.

Definitely complain, but seems it's an accepted behaviour.

Thinking of my hospital stay makes me feel sick, and that was just from the noise of all screaming babies/ other woman being disrespectful on there phones in the night or leaving babies to scream also noisy staff. I feel for you. In an ideal world I think they should add side cots onto every bed on the ward to make breastfeeding and resting easier and separate each bay with walls rather than curtains. My 1 week stay contributed to my ptsd I was up 48 hours after an ga emcs/hemmorage/sepsis and then running on 1 hr sleep each night I never got the chance to recover and started hallucinating and hearing voices & nearly dropped my baby sobbing trying to breastfeed each night it honestly was horrific and them wards have put me off having another baby. I can only imagine what it’s like having partners and family added to the noise and chaos😳

@reluctantbrit totally agree !!!! How on earth can anyone sleep or recover in those circumstances !

Bloody hell it is a hospital, not a hotel. No wonder the NHS is on its knees if they have to pander to some of these self entitled people.

IMO they should have a separate ward for those who don't have partners/family staying. Even better to ban this practice altogether.

Nightmare OP hope you managed to get some sleep.

I've seen a lot of CF behaviour on antenatal and postnatal and wards. Last time I was in hospital the help yourself breakfast table with tea, toast and cereal laid on for the women was surrounded by men happily tucking in.

You need to assert yourself with the staff op, if no one does then things won’t change. It shouldn’t be necessary, they should be stricter on it but they aren’t so you need to put your foot down. I don’t envy you- it sounds awful.

It all starts in the antenatal waiting rooms where you have men sitting while pregnant women have to stand, and whole families demanding a “gender reveal” envelope from the sonographer.

It’s turned into family entertainment.

I discharged myself 48 hours after being released from HDU with pre eclampsia & HELLP syndrome because care was so poor. My bp was still dangerously high but I hadn't had any sleep for 6 nights, didn't get any food because I couldn't walk to where food was served. I was terrified because of how poorly I was, I got no help or support from the midwives, got told to pull myself together & that I was attention seeking. I would have welcomed someone being allowed to stay with me for support & to advocate for me because of my mental state & the fact I was so weak I could hardly stand up. Nursing care was nil, I was dumped in a side room & never saw a midwife except for when they came to check my bp, I was written up for pain relief that never turned up. I was told I should be up & about, that I wasn't ill. The whole experience left me with PTSD & I still have nightmares about it 16 years later.

“but I’ve got nowhere to go”.

Even if he'd not wanted to go home surely there was a waiting room somewhere?
Maybe that's the solution. Make a nice room with comfy chairs and a good vending machine where extraneous people can be nearby if needed but out of everyone's way. I expect the blokes watching a film would have preferred that.

YANBU.
I think my first birth experience was similar to yours. Was on the high dependency ward for 24 hours and then moved onto the main ward. It was hell.
Crammed full of people, one poor girl was having her child removed by social services and they were discussing the process incredibly loudly, she was crying and her family were there ‘objecting’.
In one of the other beds was a couple who had brought a bottle of cava or similar and were toasting their new arrival.
It was a madhouse, bloody boiling hot so had to have the windows open and my bed was right next to the outside bins, which got emptied every morning at 6am. I had to walk across the ward with catheter attached to wash and past the boards of visitors.
Just for the icing on the cake, when I finally got to sleep a midwife woke me up to ‘encourage’ me to try and feed the baby, despite the fact the baby was asleep too.
I discharged myself that same day.

Just read @Nat6999 post which reminded me I also didn’t get any food because they transferred me from hdu to the main ward at dinner time and I was asleep at breakfast time and they didn’t leave me any.

And they discharged me without the correct medication.

This is why I discharged myself less than 24 hours after giving birth, and that was on a ward with no visitors allowed to stay overnight, but the visiting slots were not strictly adhered to so there were families hanging around all day. I don't know how anyone is supposed to recover when you're in a room full of noisy strangers. My bed was below the buzzer for the whole ward, which was going off constantly so I didn't sleep at all. I also rejected tea and toast directly after giving birth in a gas and air haze and no one bothered to tell me there was a room with a kettle, toaster and fruit, so I went more than 24 hours without food as I was vomiting during labour so couldn't eat. I got a shitty attitude from the midwives/nurses for leaving but I wasn't staying there a moment longer.

I'd be making a complaint, it's not on that guests are behaving so badly when the women need to recover.

How disrespectful!
I spent a week in hospital after having my dd it was horrendous.
Partners weren’t allowed to stay overnight but could stay until midnight.
On my first night I could have done with my partner being there I was really very unwell and the staff weren’t helpful but he wasn’t allowed so I plodded on and found a way to cope. However had he been able to stay with me, we’d have been quiet and respectful of the other women.
One lady in the bay with me had her partner there from 8am til midnight every day and it was horrible, the sink was by bed and I had to tell him off for brushing his teeth in the sink, I was trying to get dressed and he pushed the curtain back so he could get to the sink exposing my naked backside the the entire bay 😭 I have him a piece of my mind and so did the midwife but it didn’t stop him behaving like a Moron.
I have no issues with men generally being on the ward if they are respectful and don’t behave like utter cocks!

If you are able to look after your baby after giving birth then partners shouldn't need to stay over. My partner never stayed over after I gave birth to our three children. I was the same as pp I discharged myself as soon as I could.

My last born I had developed high blood pressure so they induced me. It was Christmas Day I wanted to go home so I asked to be discharged, advised not to I said give me the medication so I can go home. You just want to be in your own bed at home.

Calm, rest, peace to bond with your baby and recover from birth. That’s what we all apparently need immediately after childbirth but that’s exactly what the system has decided we jolly well aren’t going to get. It’s just awful.
My birth and recovery were pretty straightforward but there were women in the room who had been to hell and back with all sorts of fun stops on the way. They were in a terrible state, trying to look after their newborns, breastfeed and recover in the madness of the post natal ward must have been so awful for them.

We were in for 4 days and I was beside myself by the time we were discharged, desperate to get away from hordes of thoughtless, selfish people

I feel your pain, I had somebody next to me watching shit ITV daytime shows late at night on full volume. However I don’t feel know what the answer to this is. When I had my first, no one was allowed to stay over night. I had a very difficult birth and could do nothing for myself (I couldn’t get out of bed) and there was very little help available. I was covered in blood from the birth and the whole thing was horrendous. With my second I had a csection and my partner did stay, I needed him to as there was little to no help from staff. I forced myself, in agony, to get up and wee in a toilet because I wanted to just get home. There need to be stricter, enforced rules though, one person only, headphones, etc etc. Unfortunately post natal women are treated worse than cattle in this country.

Not just movies... but bollywood movies, how awful

I had this experience a decade and more ago when I was having my babies. One Muslim got up in the middle of the night to pray and turned all the lights on. It was horrendous.

I hope you get home soon OP, there's nothing like it.

You aren’t being unreasonable, but I have to be honest in saying I couldn’t have coped without my husband after my EMCS. I wasn’t able to lift my baby in and out of the bassinet, and there were nowhere near enough midwives to provide that support if he’d gone home. He was quiet, didn’t play any music or videos, or walk around in his PJs like some of the stories I’ve heard.

Having said that, there were a lot of partners staying who were as loud and inconsiderate as you describe (one even had to be removed by security). I requested to pay for a private room, but the hospital policy was that you couldn’t be in one for 24 hours after a section and then one never became available.

I ended up leaving after two nights because I couldn’t cope, even though I really wasn’t recovered enough.

I feel your pain, I had somebody next to me watching shit ITV daytime shows late at night on full volume. However I don’t feel know what the answer to this is.

Headphones might help with that.

That's really crap OP, YANBU. At my local hospital partners/overnight guests are only allowed if you pay for a private room, and they aren't allowed to leave the private room to wander around after 9 pm. Seemed to be reasonably well enforced as far as I could tell (I wasn't in a private room)

You need to complain that either they don't have appropriate rules or they don't have the means to enforce them.

Mind you I still didn't get any sleep during 3 nights in postnatal, but that was due to the snoring lady in the bed next to me...