Hi all, I am due to give birth to my second in about three weeks and am getting pretty anxious about midwife shortages after seeing a few posts on here.
I had my first in April 2020 so the height of lockdown when birth partners weren’t allowed at inductions. I was induced and then basically left in a cubicle on labour ward by myself - a midwife would come and discuss pain relief if I pushed the button, which lead to me getting pethidine as they thought (without checking me) that I wasn’t progressed enough for an epidural. Turned out things were moving a lot faster than they thought so when I came round from the pethidine and called to them that I was pushing, they checked me and I was 9cm so my partner could finally come in, and DD was born 15 minutes later.
Anyway, I guess my worry is born out of the fact that surely this happened because there was already a massive shortage of midwives, otherwise I would have been checked on more often/someone would have checked me earlier/someone would have noticed from how much pain I was in that things were progressing quickly? And I get the sense the shortage is worse now, especially with self isolation/omicron. I am just worried about giving birth in a situation that is genuinely unsafe.
I guess what I’m hoping for is any recent stories of things going smoothly on labour ward? I will be giving birth at kings in south london.