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.

So what do people expect if the NHS doesn't use interpreters?

Tell someone they have cancer on Google Translate?

This

The topic of the thread isn’t ‘who should get hospital canteen vouchers’, the topic of the thread is about fathers post natal.

“women who are trying to establish feeding & feeling sore”

That’s exactly why some women need their DH there though. I had a PPH, could barely pick up my baby, and kept nearly passing out. To suggest the staff were sufficient/willing to help would be living on a different planet to me and my experience in hospital…

So for a single patient over a single weekend? £22000?

A translator is a band 5 job

https://www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9444-24-0978

So about £17 an hour

A bit of maths and that £22000 works out at 27 translators working constantly over those 48 hours.

Did the patient speak 27 different languages, or did they need 27 translators to figure out what language they were speaking?

Or did you just make it up?

There have been cases where they have used family members instead of paying a pro and people have had to tell their dad he has terminal cancer. It is a complete false economy because mistranslation lays you right open to medical malpractice claims and massive lawsuits. There was a case jn the US where the hospital ended up paying out 73 million dollars because they didn't use a pro.

TBF an outsourced interpreter from an agency will cost a lot more than 17 quid an hour. Probably not 22,000 quid for 2 days though. sign language interpreters vost a lot too as it is highly specialist work and they can charge by the half day.

Yep, it also shows they don’t care about deaf people, the visually impaired or those with learning difficulties being able to access health care.

My kids were born a long time ago. My role as a father during the birth and in the days after was to offer whatever assistance was necessary, however unpredictable that was. I was happy to fade into the background whenever necessary, take myself away, get food wherever, sleep whenever, but at home. With kids 2 and 3, my role was also to care for them while their mum was in the hospital. The ward is a place for mothers and babies to be cared for, not for blokes to whinge about feeling left out.

Having been through the post natal ward horror twice, I actually agree with this (and I’m not a Reform voter). However, I do think the focus should be on providing the basics for women first. There were no working showers the first time I was in and the nurses looked astounded that I might want a wash….(I was in for 3 days both times).

My DH stayed with me and the baby 23 hrs a day (would have been 24 but the men were kicked out at 8am every morning for one hour). He did all the nappy changes etc whilst I recovered (complex c sections). Due to my medical conditions we were in a specialist hospital in London, too far from home for DH to pop back for a bit. I would not have been able to do look after the baby on my own and the nurses were far too busy to help with things like this. So whilst I agree the men are not the patients, they are providing a valuable service in looking after newborns and I don’t see why this shouldn’t be recognised. If it weren’t for them, more nurses would be required or babies might be neglected.

3x face to face translator. Non BSL translator to language 2. 2nd translator language 2 to English, 3rd translator English to BSL for family member.
On call for extended period, accommodation as at least one translator not local, hence bill.
You are perfectly at liberty to disbelieve me.

Hmmm...well, given that there are no staff to care for women and babies on the wards, I don't think it's that unreasonable for fold up camp beds to be provided for partners. The food issue...in an ideal world, yes, woman and partners would be fed, but there's usually a coffee shop somewhere in a hospital, and healthy men are pefectly capable of going to buy their own food or bring a supply of snacks from home. (It sounds like Rupert Lowe makes a lot of assumptions about what patients and carers get in general though. For instance, no food is provided to parents staying with children having cancer treatment in two of the major London hospitals. And it's not as if a parent can leave their critically ill child to pop to a shop. They either bring their own food with them or they go hungry. There's a lot wrong with the NHS - camp beds and food for healthy, mobile, fathers would be bottom of the priority list for me.)

Why does it have to be a no to showing fathers some compassion, because it’s not right for mothers?

We should be aiming to get it right for all concerned. Mothers should have good care, which would mean less of a need to have fathers staying overnight, but there should also be some basic facilities for fathers to make a cup of tea, access a blanket, warm up a meal etc.

I presumed that DH would be unwanted by the other women on the ward once I had delivered my second. I’d had my first on a midwife led unit and had received excellent care overnight. How wrong I was to send him home with my second, once I’d arrived on the ward!! I could barely stand by myself but was refused help to go to the bathroom, they wouldn’t even “keep an eye” on the baby while I went and I was told her had to wheel her cot with me to the loo etc. I was given no food or drink from 8pm - 7am, and told I could use the vending machine down the corridor. The other men on the ward with their partners were either playing with their phones loudly, shouting, or snoring and I felt quite unsafe. I ended up calling DH in floods of tears and begging him to come back ASAP! Discharged myself and baby shortly after.

I agree with PP that a return to a “maternity home” style system would brilliant.

Exactly this.

The presence of men on the ward to "support" their partners is used to justify reduced staffing and perpetuates the substandard care in maternity services.

Everyone thinks their husband is great, helpful, not annoying, and deserves to be there. "Some men are like that but not my Nigel!" and they'll talk about how they needed him there because they felt vulnerable or needed help, totally oblivious to the fact that Nigel's presence makes other women feel vulnerable and impedes other women from getting the help they need.

Birth is a physiological process requiring varying levels of medical supervision and/or intervention, women and infants go through that process so are - rightfully - the patients. Men have not gone through any of the physical stuff relating to birth and so are not patients. As non-patients, they need to go home overnight.

Aside from exceptional circumstances decided on a case-by-case basis, partners should not be staying overnight. Any man who reckons that sleeping apart from his newborn for 1-2 nights will affect his ability to bond, probably isn't that good of a man to begin with because any reasonable person recognises it as bullshit, going home from 8pm to 8am isn't going to impact their relationship with the baby and their partner unless there were already cracks in that relationship to begin with. Ditto any man who looks at maternity services and thinks "how can I make this more about me and my needs...?", he's not a good man either.

Women and babies need rest after birth and they can't get that rest when they're trying to sleep in bays designed for 4-8 women and babies that now also have 4-8 partners staying over too. They need a protected period of the day that is quiet, that gives them opportunity to rest as well as possible, and that allows them the chance to speak with staff and seek support (e.g., domestic abuse).

@lighteningthequeen well this illustrates why men should not be on the ward. You mention the other men playing on phones, being noisy & feeling unsafe! So surely no men at all is the answer. Maybe we should offer a choice & those who want a female/Mum only ward can get a bed in a bay with no men staying over. Those that are happy to share can then all get on with it together. Or perhaps there should be an option to book & pay extra if you want a private room.

I’d rather any money spent on meals for Dads go towards paying for an extra staff member.

The problem is it's cheaper to feed Dad's and get a few pull out beds than it is to hire enough staff to staff a ward full of midwives and HCAs.

After DS was born, he was in NICU on the floor below. I needed help to get down there after a c sec. Who's gonna do that if not DH? Who would have been free to get me down there if DS had died, which was a significant likelihood. So letting DH have toast and a cup of tea is an easy fix.

Same for the kids wards. The levels of care vary of much. Because we had 121 nursing I could always leave to get food, and even when he was older there was always a student or HCA who'd sit with him. I was lovingly sent off ward to get fresh air and food,but it's clear from here that many parents (mothers) have little support from staff, and there's no basic human considerations for how parents are meant to do all their child's cares, never leave them alone and occasionally eat and pee. So a basic provision of food and pull out chairs is more affordable than more staff and more holistic care

That sounds plausible but exceptional TBH. What would you suggest as alternatives for that person getting adequate care?

I remember my H was given a pass to the rather excellent hospital canteen - where he had a rather acceptable subsidised lunch - I do slightly get his point but just knew he would have to bring in about translators or diversity etc -

Great idea Rupert, why don’t you kick it off by suggesting that MPs give up their subsidised dining rooms, gyms and other perks to help the Baby Daddy Sandwich And RedBull Fund. Or you could suggest the hospital trusts carry on charging staff to park in their car parks when they are working those shifts when no public transport is available, that should raise a few quid to buy some electric blankets to keep the guys cosy.

The thread can divert to wherever it goes.

Maybe he’s right. Once all of the other far more serious issues regarding maternity care within the NHS are all fixed and the actual patients (those pesky women)… maybe some nice ladies can fix the men folk some dinner and a cosy bed to help them recover from all they’ve been through when they watched someone else do the hard work.

I don't disagree with this. While we're at it please can we also provide parents food on children's wards? I think anyone supporting a patient who is expected to be there for a prolonged period should be fed and given a place to sleep if needed.

I say that as someone who spent 48hrs being told my baby would be here soon while me and my husband got more and more knackered and hungry. It was so unnecessary.

This is the problem at the moment though. I’m expecting my first baby in the next few weeks. The hospital have made it perfectly clear that they expect partners to stay overnight on the ward and that if your partner can’t/you don’t have one you need to flag it as an issue as the staff don’t have the capacity to care for you and the baby.

Wed both much rather DH could go home and get some proper rest but equally I don’t want to be trapped on the ward feeling vulnerable with a load of other women’s partners and without mine to look after me.

I was going to at least send him home for a few hours overnight but for good reasons they lock the doors at 10pm so it looks like he will have to stay. I wish it wasn’t like this and I am aware I am perpetuating the problem, but equally I’m not selfless enough to martyr myself to make a point at one of the most vulnerable times of my life.

He can bring his own sleeping bag and fetch his own dinner though!

Sure it can. But I’m not being pulled up on not offering vouchers for parents of sick children when it’s not connected to my comment.

I’m not in the uk and find the stories of post-birth care absolutely horrifying.

our local hospital served women of all financial means. Every woman had a private room. It included a small, albeit uncomfortable bed, with bedding for the father. He was able to order meals from the same menu as the mother and just pay for them. We were treated as a family that was staying together because that is what we were. He was there to support the baby and the mother and was considered an absolutely essential person.

when my child is in the hospital it works the same way. I have a bed. I can order from the menu just like she can, I just pay for my food separately. We have a room for the two of us. the expectation is that a parent will be with her at all times.