To think a lot of midwives are.. just not very good?

[JackandSallySkellington]

Please hear me out.

I am SURE there are dedicated, talented, intuitive midwives out there. But AIBU to think beyond doing obs, most actually do very little in the course of labour/birth and a lot of the time seem very passive and like they just can’t be bothered?

I have had 2 babies at different hospitals. In the first delivery, the midwife ‘popped in to check on me’ now and then and simply called the doctor in to do an instrumental delivery when the pushing clock ran down. She didn’t do anything else - didn’t help me change positions, didn’t offer me a drink, didn’t give me adequate pain relief despite me asking (just kept saying ‘it’s coming…’), didn’t ask me how I was feeling in any way. Couldn’t have been less interested.

Second delivery far worse. I was admitted for induction and after a few hours found to be 4cm dilated. I laboured all night - a full 10 hours - in a cubicle on a ward and despite regular pleas that I was in labour, the midwives insisted I wasn’t. They didn’t exam me again, just offered paracetamol, and only took me to labour ward when I was vomiting and discovered to be in transition and 10cm dilated the next morning. I had really hoped for a water birth and I’m gutted my final labour was spent alone in the dark. The hospital apologised but what’s done is done.

I understand about overstretched NHS etc but my stories are not down to that - in both cases the midwives spent a lot of time milling about and chatting.

I feel like the only stories about midwives being great are when the birth was going well anyway so there wasn’t much for them to actually do.

AIBU to think a lot of midwives just aren’t really up to the job? Sure I’ll get my arse handed to me as I’m aware criticising medical staff is v controversial!

2 out of 3 of mine were resuscitated at birth. It's really no big deal. The other was looking up at me screaming with only her head born when they peeled off the caul. ( Facing upwards)

If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. You’re on a parenting website. Populated mostly by mothers. On a thread specifically about shitty experiences with midwives. Would common sense not dictate it will be a beacon for others to share their similar stories and experiences?
And you won’t be on the news or sued if you’re doing your job as normal, as you say you do, will you 🙄

I think it’s important to have someone with you if you can that has your back for you. They are all understaffed. My first was ok the doctor sewed me up. Second was not great (I kept saying he was coming and they said no he’s not and he literally fell out of me onto the floor as I was trying to get on the bed). My third was almost standing outside in the corridor. They sent me down to Costa to get rid of me when I was obviously in labour. My water broke there which was humiliating. Then I waited panting outside the room where the midwives were having tea until they found me a room and he came within 5 mins of me getting on the bed. Then the new student midwife cut the cord in the wrong place and they was blood everywhere (like a fountain). Then she sewed me up with other midwife watching (I was a bit out of it and wasn’t asked to be a training doll) she sewed me weirdly and I’m still not right 14 years later. Kids are all ok thankfully (the one that hit the floor with his head is at Oxford now).

I would strongly urge any woman who is unhappy with the care they received throughout pregnancy or labour and delivery to request their maternity records. See individual trust's websites for details on how to do this. It will give more backbone to a complaint, with details of dates, times, staff names etc and help piece together the events which are often difficult to recall under the circumstances.

www.nct.org.uk/information/labour-birth/recovery-birth/how-get-access-your-maternity-notes-after-birth

Disagree
And I've been a nurse for over 20 years.
Bad behaviour and poor practice needs addressed its part of our code of conduct.
Poor employees need performance managed and put on a pip.
Duty of care and duty of candour.

Being quiet and not speaking up has lead to morecambe bay, Shropshire to name a few.

There has been poor learning from the nadine Montgomery case back in 2000

I complained about my midwife and got a very wishy washy letter from the letter saying that my letter was "very sad reading" but this was before the days of debriefs and all they said was all the staff had done their best to care for me. I had help from an organsation to do the complaint (pre PALS and I can't remember what it was called) and while they wre helping me they did tell me that the hospital had recieved a number of complaints about this specific midwife and they wanted my complaint to procede with action against her. Years later I worked with a woman who was an ex midwife and I asked her if she had worked with this person. She told me that there had been complaints and that she had been sacked. For balance my community midwifes were very good, respectful and supportive and my health visitor was great too.

We had a midwife struck off in derry. Mainly for her attitude to women. She was well known .. had been going on for 40 years and of course... no one spoke up... thankfully someone was brave enough to do so... and it started the ball rollin
The amount of women who came forward after that
Please, women complain about poor experiences.

Well said
We absolutely should speak out
And staff witnessing poor care from other staff members should report
It's part of nmc code

I have quite a few hospital admissions and apart from the horrific way I was treated during childbirth I have found the majority of staff to be wonderful. I had exceptional care while having a termination and again when having miscarriages. I also had an emergency admission for a serious illness and again the care was excellent. Nobody stood my bed sneering and making horrible comments when I was in terrible pain.In fact they were empathetic and helpful. Why does midwifery seem to be so different? One of my friends was a midwife and opted to have both her children at home because of the way she had seen women treated in hospital

As a HCP, I think it is 100% misogyny, there seems to be a prevalent belief that pregnant women deserve and should expect to suffer because they “got themselves” pregnant, and that women should expect and tolerate pain and discomfort (gynaecology) when it’s not necessary.

I work in cardiology and despite using local anaesthetic and pain relief we also offer sedation to patients for fairly minimally invasive quick procedures, just because they are anxious. The threshold for offering women pain relief or sedation is unreasonably high when it comes to gynae and obstetrics, and women have their pain mocked and downplayed very frequently.

I’ve had numerous gynaecology procedures performed with zero anaesthetic or sedation offered, when I was in so much pain I was shaking and sweating I was told “that’s odd, most women only feel mild discomfort”, while they’re burning parts of my cervix off with no anaesthetic.

I have come to the conclusion that there is widespread belief that having a vagina means you should expect to experience pain and discomfort to a level that no other patient would, and that it’s completely unreasonable to think that anyone would care or be willing to do anything to minimise your pain if it involves your vagina or womb.

Ive had 2 vaginal births, and while nothing terrible happened, midwives were consistently rude, dismissive, infantilising, and uninformed. I dreaded every interaction with them. If pregnant friends ever ask for advice I always tell them to learn all they can about labour, birth, birthrights, because in all likelihood the midwives won't know anything.

I was lucky enough that both my labours were fast, so babies were born within 15 mins of arriving at hospital. But I had a midwife stitching me afterwards telling me it couldn't possibly hurt while I was screaming in pain (it was excruciating). Then threatening to take me to theatre if I didn't stop making such a fuss. I was vomiting in pain, but she was insistent it was impossible.

All midwives weirdly obsessed with induction, wouldn't stop offering it even before 40 weeks. I even got offered an induction when I called to say I was in labour with my second! Neither baby overdue, low risk pregnancies.

Even just typing these experiences (which are mild compared to other's stories) is bringing back those feelings of helplessness.

I have met one good MW when I gave birth to my 2nd child and she really did make me feel like she was interested in me and my welfare. She really did help me out in the small ways not just arrive for the main event. But the other MW’s I’ve had are as most people are describing on this thread, ranging from disinterested to actively unhelpful and making a bad situation worse. My first labour was horrible due to entirely just the midwives. They also had a very evil MW doing the stitching up who was actively rude to you at your most exposed, exhausted and vulnerable for daring to flinch or be uncomfortable being left in stirrups bleeding for 2 hours.

They were not interested in helping me to get breastfeeding either and I recall crying and feeling really afraid and upset being in the hospital after the birth

Superb post — really thought provoking. This has clarified a lot of things for me.

As a pp said, for most abdominal surgery you’d be mollycoddled (inappropriate word but you know what I mean) afterwards but somehow a c-section got her no special consideration at all. The combination of abdominal surgery with not only no rest or help AND. Immediately having the responsibility for a baby is nightmarish.

I often point out to my husband that women become accustomed to many unpleasant procedures being carried out with little or no pain or anxiety control and often little empathy from HCPs.

Misogyny must be at the bottom of this. Men simply wouldn’t put up with it, or (more importantly) be expected to put up with it.

And it’s certainly not just male practitioners- the ‘tough luck, it hurts and you’d better just put up with it’ attitude is widespread.

Apologies to the caring midwives and other professionals - of course not everyone is like this, but if you meet someone who is, especially at such a momentous time, it affects you deeply.

Yep. It seems institutionally punitive. I’ve always thought if men were the ones to have babies, it would be soooo fucking different.
I’m sure Mumsnet had a campaign about this very subject a few years back. Can’t remember what came of it.

I have similar experiences. Female GP made out I was making a mountain out of a molehill when I wanted to get a full hysterectomy rather than fanny around with the Mirena coil to reduce heavy periods. I wasn't interested in getting one fitted only to find it did nothing for me. I would like a hysterectomy but apparently that's not possible. I will just carry on with strong painkillers instead. I need them for a different medical reason but will use them to ease the pain for periods as well. It's shocking how gynae care is treated by many male and female alike. Empathy bypass comes to mind!

The problem with the current NHS structure is that the patient has no or little choice. If patients could choose their provider - their doctor, their midwife as in other countries, they would be likely to choose those recommended by people they trusted and vote with their feet if they encountered someone unprofessional or unpleasant.

I’m lucky enough to have good private health insurance through work. I have been so shocked and depressed at how much better I have been treated than in the NHS particularly in gynaecology. It’s not even competence as such, just basic courtesy and kindness such as any decent human being would show another.

Also women need to complain and do it efficiently. My niece recorded the midwife who had previously sworn at her on the postnatal ward (when she was still completely immobilised and very vulnerable) telling my niece the next time she saw her that she and her baby were a ‘f-ing nuisance’. Such people have no business being employed in the NHS

They all seemed to be so dismissiveeof pain, mine said to me " you are in early labour and fussing about nothing, you have got at least 12 hours to go, you won't cope when the pain really gets going! I was in transition at this stage, shaking, feeling vomit rising in my throat but swallowing it because I thought that if I was actually sick she would hit me! I believed her that it was early labour because she was the professional and I had never had a baby before, she made me feel useless and pathetic. Another prize remark was "look at you, you can't cope with labour, how on earth are you going to cope with a baby?" In true transition style I said " I can't do this anymore, I want to go home" and she said "get off the bed and discharge yourself then" As I said in an earlier post I consented/was intimidated into having my labour accelerated and off she stomped to get the drip and while she was out of the room I went into second stage and started to push. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to me if they had put the drip in when I was already fully dilated, would they have checked before they did it and then not done it or would they just have done it and then would my womb have ruptured? I am always so grateful to my baby for coming when they did and sparing me unnecessary intervention

@CinnamonCinnabar I don’t think midwives and doctors at all take their responsibility lightly, there won’t be one who hasn’t woken up at 3 in the morning hoping they’ve not missed anything or made the right decision. The decisions in maternity care are not as clear cut as people seem to think they are, it is often not obvious as to whether something is wrong or will actually be fine, so do you subject women to interventions which are unnecessary for 99.9% of them and in doing so become so overstretched that ironically more obvious issues get missed. The perfect example of this is when so many midwives are taken up caring for women having inductions due to a very negligible risk of waiting for them to go into labour themselves that next door in the maternity unit, another woman who hasn’t felt their baby move all day is waiting hours to be seen and then it ends up too late or a routine assessment in the antenatal clinic is so rushed that important things are missed. When midwives who had left the profession were last surveyed, it was nothing to do with pay as to why most had left, it was overwhelmingly the working conditions and being unable to give good care due to the ratio of staff to women & babies. As for not detecting a baby in the breech position, research has clearly shown that detecting a baby’s position via abdominal palpation is inaccurate, whomever the practitioner. I’ve detected quite a few breeches and other malpresentations but have also missed a couple of breeches too. The bottom of a breech baby in the pelvis does feel remarkably like a head in the pelvis, when I asked to first palpate a known breech as a student (lady waiting to go into theatre for planned caesarean) I was very surprised at how much the baby felt like a normal head down presentation, I have seen midwives with 30 years plus experience get it wrong too. Most of the women I refer for scan ? Breech turn out to have a head down presentation but the odd one does turn out to be breech. Personally I think all women should have a presentation scan at 36 weeks of pregnancy, however we struggle for scan slots as it is so it is obviously something which extra resources would be needed to implement. However the decision to change hospital policy to implement presentation scans for all women is not something the shop floor midwife has any influence over

Exactly my experience. On the 2 occasions when I’ve been sent (as an NHS patient) to private hospitals what struck me was the courtesy and kindness from staff. And no - there were no more of them on view than in NHS hospitals.

It costs nothing and it makes the world of difference.

And it’s such bad medicine to make people afraid or angry - completely counter productive.

I agree totally. I was in a ward and in huge pain and really felt I needed to push. I went to talk to the midwifes who were all chatting and laughing and they dismissed me without even checking me and told me to have a bath. I then got out of the bath and insisted they examined me and said I needed to go to the labour ward straight away..I then pushed for an hour and a half baby got stuck and I had to have an emergency c section. Awful experience and totally uncaring midwifes during a very vulnerable time in a women's life when they need reassurance not to be dismissed. This was 27 years ago and from the comments on this thread doesn't seem like things have improved!

Data from 2022–23 shows that over 800 babies may have been saved with better care in that year alone (source: Sands & Tommy's Joint Policy Unit)

Heartbreaking data from Sands.

I had almost forgotten about the night DS2 was born. He was unwell and taken to SCBU and I was put into a single room, as the staff very kindly thought it would be hard for me to go back to the post natal ward with no baby, and no idea when or if I would see him again. I’d had a c section and was in pain and catheterised, I was also hungry!
anyway there was no one available to bring me anything to eat as they didn’t know I would want anything 😳. I couldn’t walk anywhere and DH had gone home to look after DS1.
so I thought well never mind I’ll just sleep.
Ha! The midwives lounge or whatever was right beside my room, they had music playing loudly all night and were laughing and chatting at full volume. I got zero sleep and was absolutely beside myself by the time DH arrived in the morning with food. He did complain but it was far too late.
that was nearly 10 years ago and I’m still mad 😡 😂

Misogyny? In some cases, surely.

I do wonder also about a potential scientific reason for some of this horrific behaviour. In the distant wild past, women generally had to resort to more passive-aggressive behaviours to ensure reproductive success.

I wonder if there are vestiges of this showing through when midwives act so unaccountably horribly- obviously it's no excuse, but there may be an element of subconscious evolutionary mechanisms which drive them to sabotage a perceived rival's reproductive experience.