OMG! Rupert Lowe: comments on maternity/labour wards

[drummingfingers]

Rupert Lowe* is the MP for Great Yarmouth (controversial enough to get kicked out of Reform, earlier this year and is now sitting as an Independent).

Just hopped on to his Facebook page as I assumed it was a joke, but no its true:

He posted yesterday:
Giving birth is obviously an incredibly challenging experience for the mother - trust me, nobody is denying that. I do think though, that fathers should be shown more respect by the NHS during the whole process.
No food provided, no basic bedding, nothing.
The father is having a child too - potentially staying multiple nights, sleeping on the floor or a chair?
If the NHS can find hundreds of millions for translation/interpretation and the rest of the diversity bullshit, then surely a few campbeds in each ward isn't such an impossible investment? Maybe a bowl of pasta for the dad, who does actually pay for that meal through his own taxes?
I've asked the Department of Health to reconsider their approach.
It would be nice if fathers weren't treated as some awkward afterthought, during the process and often across wider society.
Let's give dads the respect they deserve.

Well, Mumsnetters, should the NHS really be focussing on this.....surely a partner could pop to a hospital snack bar or bring in his own snacks FFS. Does this MP genuinely think its the most pressing thing for the NHS to providing extra hot meals?????????????

• Rupert was the savvy MP who reported to Border Force a dingy he saw off the coast of Yarmouth as he was worried that it was full of illegals.....he proclaimed "I am chasing them now"..... but it was just some charity rowers raising funds for MND.

I suspect your hospital is the rarity. Most maternity wards don't have double beds and more than the odd private room, usually reserved for Moms who's babies are in special care

What hospital are you at where you only have hard chairs in kids wards? That's ridiculous. Ours used to have pull out beds, now they have reclinable chairs (I think they added extra cubicles so less space) and our other has weird fold out chairs. Ridiculous to expect parents not to sleep at night!

Yes, I love the way he suddenly believes all men are paying tax now - and that they're paying enough for the NHS to feed them for free, etc.

I think hospitals should have a limited number of private rooms so Dad's can stay. If my baby had died in the night, like they expected him to, like he nearly did several times in the day, then there is no level of care anyone could have given me that would have been what DH could do, and he shouldn't have been expected to just go home and get a good night's sleep away from us knowing the risks of not getting to DS and I in an emergency

Men who are not patients shouldn't be on the ward overnight, let alone getting fed. But I suppose Mr Lowe does not realise that it is anatomically possible for a man to cook his own dinner.

Interesting, Birmingham Children's Hospital did provide me with a camp bed when first DD was rushed there with a health issue during the day after she was born.

Mind you, Rupert Lowe always has been a pompous tw*t, entirely disconnected from reality. Used to be the Chairman of the football club I support and ran us very effectively into the ground.

The maternity ward doesn't have double beds, the maternity unit does (interconnected to the hospital). With DS2 maternity ward was full so we stayed on the maternity unit until discharge (had GDD so his sugars needed checking) and was offered either single or double private room as that's all they have on the unit.

With DS1 who went to neonatal was on the ward (had a designated neonatal one for the mums) but still sharing. It's a really old hospital!

I don’t think anyone’s trying to make men a priority on maternity wards, I’d agree that men could be shown a little more thought though. When having my first- it was in torrential snow and was in for 3 days in slow labour and being unwell. My husband was sat with me every waking hour, only leaving to go home and sleep for a couple of hours - he had to carry a spade to shovel his car out both ends! He was absolutely exhausted and can honestly say a camp bed and bowl of pasta would have been heaven sent! Second child - quick birth and he managed to look after himself, DD and get plenty of sleep. It’s not necessary in every case but having a stand by camp bed just in case, the compassion to see ‘he’s been here all day and hospital snacks are not proper sustenance’ to make a microwave meal wouldn’t go amiss. If men aren’t involved they’re criticised and if they do ‘they’re making a big deal out of it’ - damned if you do, damned if you don’t! Surely the best start to a newborns life is having two well parents! Not exhausted, running on empty.

I agree with him. Especially given how overly busy ward nurses are, such that new mothers are often left waiting when they need support. It would ease the burden on staff and ensure better care for mothers.

Ffs. Can’t a poor man find the NHS shop/cafe?! How about we get midwifery care for women right before we focus on men? Reform are total idiots.

I couldn’t think of anything much worse. It wasn’t allowed 20 years ago. And any bloke snoring his head off is hardly helping care for his baby is he?

My eldest DD is a midwife and has had some pretty awful experiences with men staying overnight on postnatal wards. They regularly have the Police/hospital security on the unit. The ones who are respectful and helpful to their partners are apparently in a very small minority.

Reform showing their true woman-hating colours.

It’s like the whole “we’re pregnant” shite you hear these days. Work colleague even said “we’re breastfeeding” when I asked an out his new baby and how it was going.

Men should only stay over in maternity units if in a private room. Totally unfair on women to have men they don’t know slumped in the chair snoring away in the other side of the room. And midwives have enough to do without keeping an eye on the men.

I would change the whole set up to a premier inn type building near the hospital with family rooms for all women who had had a straightforward delivery. Kettle and fridge in each room, en suite bathroom, community midwives to visit twice daily. Large bed, cot. Clean towels and linen. The expectation would be that each woman would have whoever she chose to stay with her until ready to go home. I think it would work out cheaper than the cost of a hospital bed.
The maternity/hospital ward would be just for women who had C-section, epidural or complicated delivery.

You might want to do some research before commenting. It is £100s of millions.

The police are also now spending approx £20 million per year.

Key findings

• NHS trusts spent at least £113,974,561 on interpreters during 2019-20 to 2021-22, an average of £725,953 per NHS trust that replied.
• £43,095,493 was spent on interpreters in 2019-20, the single largest year. This fell by 28 per cent to £31,050,708 in 2020-21 before rising by 28 per cent to £39,828,361 in 2021-22.
• The NHS trust which spent the most on interpreters in the UK was NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde with costs totalling £8,853,676 during 2019-20 to 2021-22.
• Barts Health NHS Trust was the English trust with the highest spending on interpreters at £5,533,389. More than £1.9 million of this was spent in 2021-22 alone.

www.taxpayersalliance.com/nhs_spending_on_interpreters_and_translation_services

Gosh, no, a man is more than capable of sorting himself out!

When ds1 was born, a midwife told dh while he was welcome to sleep on the chair next to me, but it was a female only ward and it would be a good idea for him to go home and sleep in his own bed so ds had at least one well rested parent the next day. No-one needs to stay over night unless mum is in a bad way following birth.

In the royal Manchester children’s hospital all parents are fed now after a campaign

YABU, because I’ve heard lots of fathers expressing very similar sentiments. It’s as if you’re completely shocked to hear such ideas for the first time. Of course fathers should be given a modicum of support while they’re going through such a particularly stressful and often nerve-shredding experience.

An ex-colleague once told me about the time his partner had serious complications during a five-day labour — and the hospital they were in even begrudged him one sodding cup of tea, for goodness’ sake. What happened to compassion in the NHS, and to the principle that “everyone counts”? It’s right there in their constitution.

I despair of this modern culture sometimes — why does everything have to be a misery Olympics? Just because I’m having a particularly hard time doesn’t mean I want my partner to have a gratuitously shit time as well.

My god yes, I cannot imagine subjecting the maternity ward to my partners snoring, the shakes the floor sometimes!

I couldn’t even get gas and air during transition. But yes, the important point in that situation was that someone should’ve turned up with a bowl of pasta for my DH.

Also, this maybe besides the point, but pasta is such an odd choice of food in that situation. Sure, you can knock up a reasonably quick family meal in say 20 minutes, but what I'm picturing on a postnatal ward is a bowl of plain, soggy mush after being boiled to death because the staff quite rightly have other things to concentrate on.

Methinks Rupert Lowe has likely never cooked a bowl of pasta in his life.

Lowe isn’t in Reform. He’s an independent.

For what it’s worth, after my C section I wouldn’t have coped without my husband. He had to go to the hospital shop as my meals were missed many times, my catheter bag was overflowing multiple times and I bled through all the sheets post birth and couldn’t walk after a difficult pregnancy. Due to sparse staff, it was him helping me or trying to find some competent staff. Most didn’t care.

So there are decent men who do support their partners through childbirth and shouldn’t be mocked as a ‘poor man’. Some men are damned if they do and damned if they don’t on this site.

Lowe is an independent and not in Reform.

The women who moan about men's feelings and mens rights have enabled this nonsense 🙄🙄

Its stupid and I simply dont care about a man's potential backache whilst a woman is labouring and pushing a baby out of her fanny / having major surgery

Yanbu