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!

I’m not saying they’re not nice people, and I should’ve made it clearer I meant midwives who assist with the birthing process. I have to be honest and say a hug afterwards is nice but not good midwifery per se

An old friend of mine is a midwife and she bangs on and on and on about hypnobirthing and natural births and how we must not medicalise childbirth. She's completely anti any birth intervention at all.
She gave me horrendous advice in both my pregnancies that went completely against the advice of my Obstetricians.
It was hard enough standing up against her advice in a friendship capacity, such was her forcefulness. I often wonder how many of her patients she must force her views on to who go along with what she advises in a professional capacity.

I’ve always found the community midwives to be great, really supportive and listen to wishes.

my first labour ended in episiotomy and forceps. I felt ready to push for hours and when they finally listened and checked me I was 10cm but exhausted from not having any guidance and being told to breathe through and try not to push…
second time round I vowed to listen to my body. The midwife was insistent I didn’t need to go up to l&d until my contractions matched exact length and times she wanted. They got further apart but so much more intense that I begged to go up to a pool. He was born 12 minutes after going upstairs, I told her I needed to push and wanted to get in the pool but she was sorting bloods to go to the lab and popped out to find someone to take them.I got in the pool myself and told her I could feel the baby’s head, only then did she realise I was serious and guided my breathing. After flapping to get another midwife

i think some just need to trust to actually listen to the labouring mother that she knows her body instead of sticking to certain rules of contraction times etc as let’s face it, everyone is different so you can’t blanket treat.

I think this is true of a lot of caring professions. People work hard to qualify and go into into them with the best of intentions, but eventually just get to a point where their enthusiam has worn off and they're desensitised. Unfortunately, by then they're trapped by pay and a goodpension and don't want to start at the bottom again in something else.

The one I saw during pregnancy- excellent!
The two that dealt with me after being induced - terrible!
The one who held my hand /rubbed my head while I gave birth alone - excellent!

I really lucked out with my midwives. The qualified and student for the first few hours of my labour were nice. The midwife who was there for the birth was incredible. She explained how to help get baby into an ideal position for birth (and was very supportive, so I felt up to having a crack at some new exercises after 7 hours of labouring). When I mentioned something felt different, she immediately checked and confirmed that yes, it was the baby I could feel. Baby was born in two or maybe three pushes.

I've no doubt that that GODDESS of a woman is a large part of the reason I had such a good birth. And I'm really sorry to hear so many stories of women who didn't have that support. My baby is now over a year old but I think I probably need to send a (belated!!) thank you to my midwife...

@JackandSallySkellingtonOf course, but mine were good during labour too, not that they or I had much time to think about it! Not much opportunity for rubbing my back and whatnot, I was 7cm on arrival and holding DS a couple of hours later. So much for the lavender spray and battery operated candles hypnobirthing had inspired me to pack!

I think too many midwives have a really poor attitude and are very uncaring and I honestly think that it’s endemic in some maternity wards.

I think you get a mix.

I've had some that have been dismissive or patronising and I've had some that have been really sensitive, kind and supportive.

It’s all very well saying they’ve run out of empathy or whatever, but I’m not actually asking for emotional investment - it can be a bit like any kind of customer service, you just need to be in a pleasant and interested mode which is a work persona. I have to speak to vulnerable people in my job and for sure I have off days but it’s up to me to give myself a little shake and go into ‘work mode’ for them. If it just sat there disinterested and barely spoke to them I would get complaints!

I am not sure, I had very caring and helpful staff around fairly minor surgeries (when frankly they could have just rolled their eyes, I wouldn't even have blamed them 😂 )

so childbirth, which is one of the most stressful, excruciating and dangerous process for women? It's just so wrong to be so uncaring.

It’s not a new phenomenon. My daughter was born 30 years ago and they were crap then too.

Realistically they are only human. A perfectly fine midwife might be feeling unwell, demotivated by a horrible boss or a punishing schedule, exhausted, stressed out for a dozen reasons outside work - performance is bound to vary.

I had one night-shift midwife (36 hours of labour due to an induction) who really wasn’t any good at all - she failed to notice that my hormone drip had dislodged and was just pouring onto the bed while I slept under epidural. When I woke up I thought I’d wet myself - but it was the content of the drip. So she rammed it back in and turned it up to double strength without telling me, presumably to “catch up”. Then she decided to change the bed, but in so doing she knocked my epidural needle so it wasn’t working properly . The shift changed - she never mentioned the problem with the hormone drop - the new midwife didn’t check it and so my contractions went wild- needle off the charts for about five seconds at a time — and my epidural no longer working so I started to feel all the pain again. It was so intense and the baby started to suffer racing heartbeat - so then I was prep’d for an emergency CS.

I never complained because I was so poorly after the birth I just wanted to go home. I’ve never stepped foot in that hospital again!

Yep. Every midwife i saw with my second pregnancy pushed and pushed and PUSHED for a natural birth

I had high risk twins so encountered a lot of midwives. It was about half and half. Very worryingly I found a lot of them to be full of misinformation and old wives tales.

I find a lot of nurses to martyr themselves. It gets pretty boring.

Yes I was meant to be having home birth ended up being induced in hospital due to preeclampsia. There was one lovely midwife but by the time I actually went into labour after being there 4 days she was off and there was a random from another hospital who just spent the whole time saying 'this isn't how we do it at the Princess Victoria' and being no help. The only food I had in 24 hrs of labour was 7 liquorice all-sorts as she didn't know how the lunch system worked. The emergency caesarean I had at end of it was cracking though! Fabulous anaesthetists.

I think it’s that thing where just because they have education and knowledge and even experience they (I include doctors in this) think that they know better. NO ONE knows better than the person who is actually going through the process.

100% this. An NHS wide issue.

I will preface this by saying there are many amazing midwives, and they are all doing an impossible job given cuts and understaffing in the NHS.

A friend of mine who works in hospital theatres says midwives are the maddest most difficult bunch of people he's ever had to work with. And that's including the surgeons 😅

YABU. Your theory is only based on your personal experience of having 2 children.

The labour ward midwives were great, very empathetic and encouraging. Could see I was terrified. They were very young and possibly not long qualified, but their supervisor/midwife in charge was also superb.

Community midwives and postnatal ward midwives absolutely terrible. Didn’t listen, made assumptions, wrote the wrong thing in my notes, put my baby in danger because they didn’t listen and laughed at my concerns (she ended up having to be readmitted the following day). They made pregnancy far more stressful than it needed to be. Postnatal ward midwives were forever hiding in the staff room where you could hear chattering and laughter rather than actually supporting women. Gave out wrong information (also putting baby at risk). Bad attitudes.

I imagine there are some good ones out there but maybe they go and get better jobs, leaving behind the terrible ones who wouldn’t get a job anywhere else?

Look at the votes though.. on Mumsnet..

I think they take on the culture of the ward, if it's the culture of the staff to be disinterested, it filters to all of them, my husbands ex was a absolute horrible nasty twat through and through, and an alcoholic to boot, how the fuck she ever got to be a midwife I'll never know.

I’ve had 2 babies in the last few years. I can’t criticise the ante natal care or labour ward at all to be honest. A real range of characters, some were much more passive but generally I felt looked after.

Post natal ward, at least half of them seemed to have contempt for women and babies. Really wanted nothing to do with helping either. It was strange. Many of them were lovely though.

I felt a little underwhelmed by the midwives I experienced on ward after giving birth. Before the birth, good, during the birth, good (though longest was about 30 mins/ shortest about 5 mind so limited experience to go on), Aftercare on discharge pretty good, as I remember it. However, I felt the midwives on the ward after giving birth were pretty poor. Sorry - I'm certain it was probably an unusual experience. They just sat out drinking tea and didn't seem interested/were quite cold. I discharged myself after about 10 hours as a result. Looking back I found that a disappointing experience but, as I say, all the other midwives I met were competent/ good or excellent so just a bad experience probably. I guess we all just have limited experience to go on.