Partners sleeping on maternity ward?

[Jaaxe]

I’m due a csection in December, it’s not my first csection so I know birth recovery especially csection isn’t a walk in the park with a newborn and that having your partner in the hospital is helpful and good for bonding but aibu to think partners shouldn't be allowed to stay overnight to sleep in the bays alongside all the other female patients overnight? A side room is fine with me but a bay with other female patients at their most vulnerable, no thanks. I think the flexible visiting during the day is great but having partners camped next to your bed with just a curtain between is a no from me. Aibu?

I posted my above PP too soon. Yes, there need to be exceptions to any rule, such as when a baby is desperately ill and in any other circumstances worried parents would expect to be with their child.

These are exceptions to what should be the rule. Once, just once, women are in a situation which should entitle them to be put first, considering the strain and trauma their bodies have just experienced for all of 40 weeks.

Yet, apparently, no. People are not bewailing the appalling, often substandard maternity care that in other areas of medicine would rightly cause a scandal. They are, yet again, expecting the women to concede, put up, and shut up.

This is not good enough. And I say this as a woman who experienced a high-risk pregnancy after numerous miscarriages, followed by a traumatic birth, EMCS and nearly losing our one cherished DC in labour. Men were not allowed to remain on the wards overnight in this instance (DC is 8), and I was grateful for the peace on that ward and the chance to recover and get BF established, without stressful overcrowding or being on edge because of the presence of men.

@KittyKel - sorry your experiences were so awful. I hope your DC has made a good recovery.

It was a good thing. New mothers and their babies were properly looked after. How could anyone not think it was a good thing when they hear the horror stories about the absolute shitshow maternity services are now?

I don’t think a dad only being allowed to see his new baby for a few hours a day and being separated from them (and his partner) for a whole week is a good thing at all.

These are exceptions to what should be the rule. Once, just once, women are in a situation which should entitle them to be put first, considering the strain and trauma their bodies have just experienced for all of 40 weeks.

And this is what happens when women have their partners stay overnight.

They are putting their needs first by making sure they, and the baby do not suffer due to no support overnight on and understaffed unit.

I think it’s awful that women are expected to martyr themselves and be expected to just put up with shit hospital care at the detriment to themselves.

Jesus did you even read what @KittyKel wrote? What sort of woman hating person are you?

Or, a thread with the odd person who either hasn't read the posts, or is lacking reading comprehension skills.
Most of us don't have to force our partner to want to be around us either. 😉

There are two things which are awful here.

The first is having to do without adequate support after having a baby when you're weak and vulnerable.

The second is the gross invasion of privacy which comes from being essentially on a 'mixed' sex ward, separated only by a flimsy curtain, and expected to put up with intimate examinations, vaginal bleeding, catheters and all that in the presence of men who aren't medical staff and often behave quite inconsiderately. This wouldn't be tolerated in any other context.

People weigh these issues in different ways, but recognising the other side of the issue would probably go a long way towards addressing the problem. For example, women having intimate procedures should feel comfortable insisting that all men leave the room during them (or medical staff should make this request on their behalf).

I'm not sensitive and my days of maternity wards are over thank god but that doesn't stop me seeing thing from other women's POV. My DH is a top bloke and a great dad but do I think it's fair that random women who have just given birth have to listen to him snore all night? No I bloody don't. I think the best solution would be to split wards into partners and no partners, I know which I'd have chosen.

You’re focusing on the wrong thing. The point is that maternity services should be good enough that women are properly supported without essentially turning maternity wards into mixed sex wards. Men on maternity wards is much more inappropriate than men in public loos.

Women need to feel comfortable refusing to be examined or treated in the presence of men. A curtain is not sufficient privacy.

We'd never expect a women having a smear test or hysteroscopy to be happy having it in a hospital waiting-room with a curtain pulled round, would we? Why does this standard of care therefore become acceptable on maternity wards?

Perfectly reasonable for men not to stay. When I had my son, at an NHS hospital, I got so lucky though as the only place available was a private room 🎉 It was so nice and chilled out.

Absolutely this.

And a potential solution to both sides of this issue is a recognition of the inadequacy of maternity care leading right back to the year dot, or the situation in the interwar years in which the UK had amongst the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

There are conversations to this day about women's health concerns being minimized or dismissed, when similar concerns in men are far more likely to be taken seriously. This is the key issue, combined with the inadequacy of existing postnatal care, not the stepping-in of relatives to fill in the shortfalls in that care.

In any other area of medicine, this is what people would be kicking up a stink about.

This thread is a real eye opener to someone who had a baby 45 years ago. I am deeply shocked by the state maternity services are in. I can see why some women might think having a partner there to prop up the system would help but really most men don’t really know how to support women in really stressful circumstances, even if they aren’t actively dangerous to their partners or other women on the ward.. women must keep campaigning to improve staffing and services to ensure that we and the babies are safe. Just bunging a few men in does not do that. I was very glad that I had a little peace and quiet for a couple of days to recover from a forceps delivery.women deserve proper recovery time. Although I went home fairly soon (for those days) if the care was better, I would now think that 10 days minimum would be really good.

I would now think that 10 days minimum would be really good.

@Ramblingnamechanger 10 days in hospital??? I mean a properly staffed 3 days would be a great start! I would absolutely crack up for 10 days (assuming everything went OK obviously). They were going to let me out on day 2 and changed their minds and I was devastated!

As pp have highlighted, a large part of the problem of course is that many wards (even some built fairly recently) are still designed for a different era of patient care.... i.e. most care, including personal care, being provided by midwives/nurses, babies being whipped away overnight to a nursery so mothers can sleep and fathers kicked out after (fairly short) visiting hours. You can see that in the design of many bays where cots are crammed in between the beds and fathers keep disturbing their partners' neighbours' curtains because there isn't enough space even for chairs really. And the staff have trouble getting round them to access patients and patients don't really even have space to get out of bed to go to the toilet when visitors are there. Regardless of the debate as to whether men should be allowed to stay on maternity wards, I think some hospitals need to acknowledge that actually they don't have the space or facilities to enable this safely or with dignity. And that's something women could then take into account when deciding where to give birth.

Although I went home fairly soon (for those days) if the care was better, I would now think that 10 days minimum would be really good.

In my Trust you can go home as early as 6 hours after birth. Most women are discharged within 24-36 hours.

There is absolutely no way a ward can allow for 10 days stay when they need beds forest other women. It just wouldn’t happen.

And I doubt any woman would want to spend 10 days in a maternity ward even if they had the choice.

And I doubt any woman would want to spend 10 days in a maternity ward even if they had the choice

A week of being looked after was bloody lovely. Most second timers didn’t want to go home. .

A week of being looked after was bloody lovely. Most second timers didn’t want to go home.

😂

The difference being that you said you got looked after. Most women on Maternity wards don’t have that luxury 😂

Precisely. Which is the point I’ve been making all along. Maternity services have deteriorated beyond all recognition in 40 odd years.

most men don’t really know how to support women in really stressful circumstances

That seems like a sweeping generalisation and not something that I recognise from my own life experience whatsoever.

When I had my DS I was so hungry in hospital. They laid out trays in the food service area which you help yourself to and took back to your cubicle. The portions were always tiny. Found out why on my last day. Dad's who were staying were helping themselves to other women's food when they went to fetch trays for their partners. So I'd pick up a tray with a bowl of soup on it, unaware that these selfish greedy bastards had taken taken the roll, muffin and tub of fruit salad I should have also had.

My husband is amazing. I've had a timely reminder of that this year, involving a protracted hospital stay (normal visiting hours observed bar the one situation in which my life was in imminent danger), in circumstances which can't be too quickly left behind.

In that situation, the needs of other patients had to be taken into account. There were patients on that ward who, like me, were in a bad way. Nobody even questioned this. I don't understand what's so different about maternity wards. My wants (I was catharized after EMCS and not in a good way) don't trump the needs, rights, privacy and dignity of other patients.

The problem is the quantity of staff and quality of care.

I don't understand what's so different about maternity wards.

The difference is the woman is there recovering from birth, AND has a whole helpless other human to look after. In some cases, the woman is not fit to look after the baby and needs help, as you know they have birthed a child and complications and recover from that effects people in different ways. As you said, the quantity of staff and quality of care is not always available! Sometimes it's not about the woman's "wants" but the needs of her and her baby!

I agree with @Confusion101 the difference is that on other wards your job is to get better, so sleep as much as you need. On maternity if all has gone well you have to look after a small helpless person who depends on you for food while in all other similar situations you'd not even be expected to look after yourself, food would be brought around to your bed, you'd be helped to the toilet if required etc.

However in maternity there's an assumption that most of the time you're to go and fetch your own food, dress a small person and feed them sleeping only when they sleep which very much depends on the individual child if they want to do that... My first basically slept for 12h after the birth (born at 2pm) and then fed from 2am. I was most disappointed when my second came out ravenously hungry and fed basically from birth for the next 24h... having been born at around 11pm...

Recovery for the mother seems to be an afterthought, as you're responsible for a small person who has no interest in letting you rest, and given the ability to get home quickly after delivery if it's routine, the vast majority of women in overnight will have had less routine deliveries and will therefore need more help!

Recovery for the mother seems to be an afterthought, as you're responsible for a small person who has no interest in letting you rest, and given the ability to get home quickly after delivery if it's routine, the vast majority of women in overnight will have had less routine deliveries and will therefore need more help!

Definitely. DS was 2 weeks early, 5lbs8oz so right on the NICU cusp, precipitate labour, I had a massive bleed and PROM so they needed 48 hours to monitor us for infections. And yet they popped me on the normal ward, seemingly confused as to why we were struggling to establish breastfeeding. Without DH's support I'd have gone to formula on day one.

I ended up being moved to a midwife unit for day 2 and it was absolute bliss as I was the only one in recovery and the community midwives were as different as night and day. It was empty because he other women came in, birthed and left.

That was 4 years ago and, or course, the governement have closed the unit.