To think British maternity care must be among the worst in the developed world?

[ForestGoblin]

Nurses refusing to watch newborns when a mum needs to poo??? Nurses have got a professional and legal obligation to support patients to receive adequate personal care (not being compelled to poo yourself has got to be rung one of meeting that obligation).

Friends who have given birth in Ireland, france, south Korea, Switzerland were all given support to sleep, recover, be recognised as an injured person in need of recovery time.

British nurses trick new mothers into thinking they can't leave their babies for a minute on a bloody hospital ward (even when they've got numb legs).

Rise up, damnit!

Agreed. Our social systems are not comparable to the wealth that exists in some parts of this country. Probably for sexist reasons. Other countries have it much better. People who don’t travel don’t realise.

It absolutely blows my mind. Some of the behaviour is quite literally criminal but instead of calling the police to a ward new mums just feel guilty for finding the impossible hard.

The majority of care on postnatal wards is given by midwives rather than nurses, the vast majority of whom would love to have time to give new mothers even the bare minimum of care. You are right it's dire here, a lot is down to not being adequately staffed; as across the rest of the NHS recruitment and retention is a huge issue. Plenty of people apply to train as midwives but either leave training or leave early on in their career when they realise how crap it is here. I'll try and find the source but there was a stat recently that said out of every 10 midwives that train only 1 will be working as one within 3 years.

Unless something is done it'll only get worse, I wouldn't have another baby in this country.

Don't care if they have time or not. They have a responsibility to do it. "Sorry I didn't clean your wound and now you've died of gangrene but we're so understaffed" wouldn't fly elsewhere, would it.

@Tippley i also would not have another baby in this country. I would consider it in a country which had a developed healthcare system where I could be reassured that my health wouldn’t be at such a high risk as it would be in the UK.

I wonder how many british women go to give birth abroad now. Norway sounds nice.

I haven't looked into the source of this https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/maternal-mortality-ratio/country-comparison/

However maternal death rates are quite a broad indicator of maternity care (also reflective of other issues like obesity) and the uk does not fare very well (another fairly recent study reported in the guardian put uk second to bottom just above Slovakia out of 8 European countries in the study). I think not being able yo poo is the least of our worries

No it wouldn't, nowhere did I say it was acceptable did I? But its the current reality. It doesn't matter whether you care if they have time or not, they have to prioritise and sadly there will be some women who need immediate help more than someone having a shit. And no, again I'm not saying that's acceptable but it's reality and partly why so many are leaving.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/12/nhs-loses-29-midwives-every-30-trains/

It's bad, it wasn't good when I had eldest in 2005, and British women are trained to accept poor treatment with horror stories about it costing more abroad. Plus cost cutting disguised as being "good for you":"well you'll have to watch the baby when you get home so you shouldn't expect help now" and "pain is better for you" and "don't be too posh to push!"

It’s absolutely barbaric the way new mums are treated. They are patients in need of rest and sleep, and should be treated as such.

Me neither, I'd be worried to be honest to need to access any NHS care in the coming years with all of the roles they are creating for faux doctors.

The racial gaps in maternity care in the UK are appalling also. We like to blame all the issues and bad outcomes in America on their for profit health system, but we don't do better! I gave birth in London near the time of the Northwick Park scandal and as I recall all the women who died were not white.

The substitution of thinking dads might stay on the ward 24/7 is ridiculous too - there should be men on a ward night and day, some people don’t have a partner or have other kids that need the dad at home, and some dads refuse to do anything useful.

Providing a chair and allowed them to stay overnight doesn’t make up for no nursing care for the patients.

Sorry there shouldn’t be men there night and day!

The obsession with pushing to breastfeed at every midwife appointment during pregnancy and then after birth no one was available to help, you're just left to figure it out for yourself whilst semi paralysed.
Oh and let's not forget the failed epidural, 2nd epidural, paralysed from the tits down, being asked to push as if "you're pushing out the biggest poo of your life "
Even though you literally can't find your own arsehole because you're PARALYSED by the epidurals and then your notes says "c section due to poor maternal effort!"
Set of twats.

Have had a baby with both NHS and HSE in Ireland. Ireland was miles better. They offered to take the baby overnight for c-section mothers, had brought meals and snacks to the bed, had short visiting hours and I even saw a physio as standard before I left. It's also a min 3 night stay after c-sections. Compare that to emergency section with NHS (baby got stuck during section) where the surgeon came round the next day to ask if I would leave when I still couldn't walk, constant noise from partners and visitors on wards and really poor pain relief.

No, the USA has far worse outcomes. Maternal and infant mortality is worse there than many developing nations. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4546

Maternal care in UK is poor and getting worse but it is in no way comparable to developing nations.

It also appears that if you're black, it's even worse.

NHS spending on maternity services is £3bn annually. NHS spending on maternity malpractice compensation is £8bn annually.

That sounds much better but it ought to be for all mothers - it’s not only c section mums who need to rest!

I’ve also read that and also heard it from anecdotal experience

Lack of time and being understaffed is not an excuse. Midwives/nurses chatting at the desk on the maternity ward, then shouting at me because I tried to take my baby into the bathroom, no one to hold her, so I peed myself standing in front of the bathroom doors.

Asking for help with breastfeeding, and getting the “baby needs to learn to latch” without even a cursory look at me.

Can’t even imagine how traumatising it is for mothers with real problems post birth. Disgrace.

Mine was brilliant.

Yes, the US is worse (though having given birth here twice and worked in maternal/child public health I think it's rather more complicated than the quality of direct care provided) -- my point was that if the UK is still doing poorly, which on the racial gap it absolutely is, that the problem isn't just for-profit health care.

The actual direct care that I had in the USA, in particular the nursing care in hospital, was absolutely better and that's largely because they had enough staff. NHS hospitals dump women in wards and then don't have adequate staff so either partners have to stay all night so no one gets rest or mums don't have anyone to help. It's awful.

You can't just rock up in Norway in labour. The rest of Europe is tricky too with, you know, Brexit.

Anyway, in Denmark there has just been a high profile case about a baby dying because there was not enough midwives to help the mum give birth. So yes, things are not great in the UK, and haven't been for a long while (I had DD 10 years ago and had zero help in hospital despite being REALLY unwell from birth, and also had to leave her to have a poo, which was not a quick thing as I had severe constipation).