The most shocking thing about the maternity enquiries is how unshocked I am.

[GreyandWhiteBathMat]

Reading this this morning

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyn8n3nyrlo

Which prompted me to read East Kents enquiry, I'm maybe a third of the way through. While I am angry and frustrated reading it nothing has shocked me. It's completely in line with my own experiences in my local (not under enquiry) maternity ward 25 years ago. The arrogance, dismissal and casual cruelty of the midwifery staff there is well known. I didn't have issues with obstetricians who were, on the whole, great if not particularly visible.

Why is this? Why are these features so common? I lean towards it being a long standing issue with midwifery education. It just seems so pervasive in a way I haven't seen across other services.

Oh, just seen your latest post saying your positive birth was some time ago... so not a recent experience of the state the hospitals are in currently?

Talking about our horrific birth experiences is not ‘shouting into a negative echo chamber’. I feel like your post was rather insensitive given what some of us have shared on here. I didn’t have an abusive childhood, but I don’t go on threads where people are sharing stories of abusive parents and say ‘well my childhood was great’. No one is denying that you had a positive experience and it’s great that you did, but please give us the space to discuss our trauma freely.

This doesn't surprise me at all. When I had my daughter I had some lovely midwives, and some absolutely horrible ones. There was a definite correlation with the younger ones tending to be nicer and more patient (not all I did see a senior midwife in clinic who was so supportive. I did wonder whether the younger ones get jaded/have to leave to keep their compassion or sanity even.
I think I was lucky though reading some of these replies. I do vividly remember a midwife on the post natal ward shaking me awake at 3 in the morning after a 40 hour labour telling me to wake up and feed the baby (who was asleep). I told her she'd been fed half an hour ago, and she scathingly said it was very strange for a new mother to feel comfortable enough to sleep, most stay up to make sure their babies are okay. I was baffled as was her student 😂. I gave me a lot of guilt during the sleep deprived weeks following though

Ds 11 is an only because of my experience of labour and birth.The major thing that stuck out was the so called Dr panicked when blood gushed out of me when I was delivering which caused me to panic.I still get emotional if talk about it now.

Having worked in the nhs and been a patient including at the mercy of midwife’s I do not buy into the hero narrative. The discipline does attract and retain awful people. Combine that with shite teaching and awful working conditions, equals shite patient ‘care’.

It is pretty simple. A proportion of women have internalised misogyny. This in turn strengthens the patriarchy and women being second class citizens. Women suffer, men benefit. Always the way until women such as midwives on a power trip learn to stop being nasty to each other and direct their ire instead against societal structures that entrench their subordination.

@Bbq1

truly, I would be so delighted to hear that there are places where women get treated routinely as you did. It really isn’t a race to the bottom and ideally all women would get excellent care. I do know of women who had good births - they do tend to be the ladies who didn’t require very much assistance and monitoring and whose babies were well positioned after a spontaneous labour, the “straightforward” ones. It feels as if, if you are not one of those ladies, you often get treated as if you are difficult, which is sad.

Really? Don't be ridiculous. I'm quiet and more introvert than extrovert. I'm no more "difficult than the 4 of my 6 NCT friends who had similar experiences to mine. I made little noise during labour, had only gas and air. In fact we found my birth plan screwed up at the bottom of our hospital bag when we got home. I demanded nothing. I had 2 midwifes who came and went as they were seeing to other women, a, dr who arrived and broke my waters as baby's heart rate was elevated, then left. I had 3rd degrees tears. It's a ridiculous argument to imply that women with good outcomes are demanding therefore women with poor outcomes must be undemanding. I was just trying to give a positive spin to pregnant women who may be reading the thread full of horror stories. Trying to be personal and nasty is just a low blow.

I and couple of other posters did say we'd had good births on NHS before having one that nearly killed us or were awful in other ways.

So I don't think anyone was saying all NHS births are awful - sadly increasing numbers seem to be- as poor attitudes,training deficits, lower staff levels, poor retention of better midwives and other stortages have bitten more and more into maternity services round the country.

If we can't talk about what wrong there will be no poltical pressure to change anything and future mother and babies will continue to suffer unnecessarily - well have yet more inquests where lesson aren't learnt and more enquires with the same.

It also feel like toxic postivity - I had two good births therefore last one that nearly lost me a child or could easily have left my older kids motherless is fine and not all all tramatic for DH and I.

In fact it was sheer luck we didn't get that outcome and I actually had a midwife say to us afterwards we should be greatful as it so easily could have been worse - their incompeteance and lack of care didn't kill either us - we did feel lucky but we should never have been in that place to start with.

I do agree though for anyone pg and reading most births are still fine to okay to great - and it's just an increasing unlucky number who are having really poor and dangerous experiences and increased press scunity and interest and more poltical oversight can't help but improve those odds.

My DD2 as I stated had a positive birth in the MLU. And Def recent as baby not 3 months old yet. Although no doctor but that's the point of MLU

@Bbq1that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I wasn’t saying that those with good outcomes are demanding. What I was saying was that there is a proportion of women who will have a good birth almost whatever happens (great candidates for the MLU or the homebirth) and there are a proportion of women who will have a difficult birth whatever happens (me - I think I would have ended up with a CS whatever happened). What I was saying was that often on these threads the women who report having had brilliant births would always have had quite a good birth experience and that the NhS often treats people badly as “difficult” when they are not straightforward cases and either not progressing or querying what more can/should be done.

another example, in my case, those who had a VB got offered tea and toast afterwards, whereas I was out of it after my EmCS and not only was offered nothing but no one even told me when dinner came around so there was no food available at all for me that evening.

Yup. Seems everyone these days has a birthing horror story. I have PTSD from my 4 day labour where midwives didn't do anything. I find the attitude is that we should be greatful for modern hospitals and that me and LO are alive whereas a hundred years ago we wouldn't be.

What chat room? Is there are forum on here? Or was it somewhere else?

My daughter is nearly 10 and I still find it really hard to think about her birth. I couldn't talk about it for years.
Nasty, aggressive midwives snapping at vulnerable mothers on the ward. I had a third degree tear and I lay in bed with my sheets soaked in blood and they ended up being changed by a nursery nurse(?) who came into the ward and was shocked at the state I was in. My colostomy bag wasn't changed and was filled up like a balloon and it actually fell off the bed still attached to me.
I was left alone to breastfeed even although I was having problems with feeding her and needed support. The woman in the next bed to mine and I resorted to reassuring and advising each other through closed curtains as the midwives just barked when they were asked to help.

I suffered horrendous post natal anxiety. These stories are so difficult to read. But not surprising.