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 think certain births should qualify for the birthing partner to stay with mother overnight – c-sections, multiple births, preemies, any other complex deliveries or health needs, and those fathers should be provided with sleeping gear like a camp bed. Probably not meals though, but maybe discount vouchers to the canteen or something if they’re in for a long stay.

The ‘open postnatal wards’ you refer to have actually been requested by women at my local hospital. It has recently opened up a ‘family bay’ where men can stay with mums and babies overnight.

This is because there aren’t enough staff to care for the women, so either the dads or family members need to be there to help.

I don’t think it’s appropriate to have men staying overnight on a ward with women who are trying to establish feeding & feeling sore. I think there should be set visiting times - pretty sure that was the case when I had mine. How can health care staff work with random men wandering around, lying on the beds, ordering in take away food. How do you monitor phone use & potentially videoing on the ward? I’ve heard horrible stories about men trying to coerce their partner into sex right after birth. Can’t they pack some snacks to eat - there’s plenty of time to get organised. I had a deep tear with my second & the last thing I would have wanted was the extra stress or strange men bedding down for the night just behind a flimsy curtain.

The set visiting times don’t work for women who give birth in the evening or overnight and can’t move after just having had a c section.

Women are still trying to establish feeding during the day. So i don’t get the day/night argument.

It would be nice to know visitors were coming in at set times rather than them being there 24/7. If a new Mum has had a c-section then the staff should be on hand to help. That is the issue here - there should likely be more staff around. Having an unknown male just yards away from a woman post c-section doesn’t sit right with me. Women are at their most vulnerable post birth & allowing men access to this space just feels very wrong to me.

Parents with ill children in hospital don't get any discount vouchers to the canteen. I'm not sure if fathers should just because their partner has had a baby unless it becomes a hospital wide thing.

Yeah the big issue though is that there aren’t enough staff, especially at night, and some of the staff that are there are making big mistakes.

This will likely take years to fix, if it ever gets fixed, so in the meantime women need someone to support.

Also why should dads be sent home an hour and a half after the birth and not be allowed to spend more time with their baby until the following day?

Of all the things that are priority to our failing NHS at the minute this is not up there is it?

Women used to be properly 'nursed' and cared for after birth. The man didn't need to be there. My mum had 10 days care after I was born - I slept on a different ward! With nurses bringing me to her to feed. SHe said it was like an amazing recovery period where she was able to really establish BF

What is wrong in our culture is that women are not supported in breastrfeeding and are sent home broken and exhausted.

Men shouldn't need to be sleeping on wards it's not fair on the other mums - and in many cases they will have other children to get home to anyway

Men helping is basically a race to the bottom.

Women need to be able to sit basically topless if they want BF to work - one of the reasns we have appallingly low BF rates in the UK is because it's not understood how much the mum has to devote all her time to it in the first weeks. She has to more or less do nothing else and needs to be skin to skin a lot of the time.

So no, having men wandering about is not helpful.

I sent my husband home as soon as I was back on the ward he did not need to be there and other mums didnt need him there they need to be at home

He’s not wrong. Maternity as a whole needs an overhaul and everything he mentions would help new fathers to show up properly to support their partners. It would normalise them both being in hospital vs the old saying if dad going off to the pub to wet the babies head. Maternity in the UK needs completely redesigning, as do the wards.

Most Mums are only in hospital for a night or two & there’s plenty of time for Dads to get involved once they’ve gone home. To be honest there are so many threads on here about partners who won’t get up to the baby in the night, don’t help with household tasks, disappear off on a bike ride etc that I’m sure most men can cope for a couple of days. Why do vulnerable women have to accommodate men because they want to get involved? It’s just another invasion of women’s only spaces.

But it comes back to the issue of there not being enough staff to help.

Many of us on MN have detailed issues such as not being able to move after after having had a c section, being unable to safely reach the baby and no staff coming when we ring the buzzer for help to simply pick up our baby to feed it.

Because there are a lot of women on MN, myself included, who had experiences where we really needed someone else there because the staff weren’t helping and we literally couldn’t get out of bed or even shuffle enough to reach our babies.

He is actually right though. The expression is wrong but these are simple fixes for everyone. I didn’t eat anything on the ward as it was so terrible. Tea and toast for mum is a thing of the past too - you are directed to the kitchen to make it yourself.

For DC1, i had a CAT1 EMCS at 7.30pm. It was actually my DH that fully witnessed all the doctors being emergency buzzed because they lost trace of his heartbeat and it scared the shit out if him. Let alone being worried about me being cut open on a table next to him. I was too out if it to notice everything because my BP was so low.

He then wasn’t allowed to come with me to the ward at all, so was sent home, worried, after just witnessing all that, feeling powerless to help me and not being allowed to see his newborn son.

So yes, regardless of what i was going through, maybe this MP does have a bit of a point.

First of all this MP is a racist twat, need to make that very clear before I say anything which even remotely agrees with him.
However my partner was invaluable after I gave birth. I had an emergency c-section and couldn’t reach my baby when he was in the bassinet. When he was off the ward it would take over 45 minutes for a midwife or healthcare assistant to get to me when I pressed the alarm, during which time I gave up, got the baby myself and messed up all my stitches. That was through no fault of the staff, there just wasn’t enough of them.
The worst bit he found wasn’t the lack of food or the chair to sleep on - they were all manageable. It was the fact that there was no visitor toilet on the ward so whenever he needed a wee he’d have to leave the ward and then wait at one point over an hour to be let back in due to lack of staff on the front desk.

Your lucky! Our canteen is run by volunteers for a few hours in the day, our vending machines just have chocolate and crisps and our shop is only open 9-5 and again only sells chocolate,crisps and toiletries. Having a vending machine with microwave meals sounds a great idea!

FFS, it's a hospital, not a hotel. How about we focus on meeting the women's basic needs first, seeing as they're the ones actually giving birth. The absolute state of maternity services in this country, and he's whining about not being served a bowl of pasta? 🙄

Then that's a perfect example of how the focus needs to be on providing women with better care, not fetching dad a hot meal.

I was in the same situation after second baby but I still wouldn’t have wanted to be on a ward with men wandering around. I had 3rd degree tear & wasn’t able to use the toilet or shower properly & had to shuffle along. I think we need proper maternity units like they had in the 70s. Bringing men into this space isn’t the answer to the problem.

Well you don't need to try harder to push your far right, algorithm fed bullshit , because here it is!

The solution to having inadequate medical/postnatal care is not to have members of the public hanging around at all hours. Whilst we accept the plugging of the gaps by husbands and partners, things will never improve.

I agree. I felt incredibly vulnerable shuffling to the showers, knowing that my pyjama bottoms were covered in blood. This wasn't helped by the fact the shower opened straight out onto the ward. I didn't want men watching me shuffle along or being able to hear them whilst I showered.

Partners were meant to go home at the hospital I gave birth in but unfortunately it wasn't enforced. I couldn't wait to get out of there and was very pleased to see my DH when he returned to collect me.