Ante natal notes, post natal notes, are they given back?

[spg]

Hi ppl,

I never got back my ante natal notes or post natal notes..
Wondering if this is a general practice or can we request for it to be given back..

Or is there a procedure to be followed to request for them to be given back

It is a personal record after all and can be potentially useful for a future pregnancy.

Would be great to hear views/experiences on this

Thanks

You won't be given them back as they are part of your overall medical records but you can request a full copy of your notes from the hospital - details should be on your hospital/maternity unit website (even if you have a home birth your records will be kept at the hospital AFAIK)

If it's more than 40 days since they were updated (eg you were discharged more than 40 days ago) they can charge you an administration fee of up to £50.00 for these notes (mine cost me £40 :( - I shall be writing the request letter before the baby is even born this time and getting posting it off shortly after!)

You can pay to have copies of your ante natal or post natal notes. If they are on paper it will cost you £50. Your notes will be somewhere in the dungeons of your local hospital.

Oh and for a future pregnancy your notes will be part of your record so will be available to the hospital

Oh - I just took mine home from the hospital when I was discharged. Was that wrong?

Thanks a lot for that. I will call my hospital asap to get it back.

My BP spiked at labour, after being normal all along (at least thats what it was during the mid wife appnmnts) and the baby was small as well..so, I just want to see the record.

thousandDenier Not wrong per se as they're your notes, but they do form part of your overall medical record and so should be kept with everything else. If you lose them and they're the originals, then there's no record anywhere of that pregnancy or birth. Did you take the notes for the pregnancy and the labour, or just the hand-held pregnancy file (I only ask as there was nothing of interest in my pregnancy file, all the interesting stuff was in the labour notes!) Might be worth copying them yourself and then handing them in to your GP practice, so they can be filed centrally for future reference.

Good question spg, I have often wondered how people on here seem to know the blow by blow detail of their labours. I never thought to ask for them as I assumed they wouldn't be handed over anyway.
I would love to know what are in mine as had a traumatic 4 day induction and forceps and the whole thing seemed very bodged to me, even the midwife apologised for the way it went afterwards. That's one reason I'm going for CS this time as the whole birth seemed so utterly chaotic. I'm off to look into paying for mine now so I know what decisions were really taken and what actually happended to me.
I did get a brief sneaky peek at them about 4 months after the birth when I had to go back for repair operation and was left sitting in a corridor holding the file, but felt slightly guilty about looking properly and kept having to shut the file when someone came past. Stupid really as they are our notes about our own births!

Anchorwoman I certainly recommend getting them, mine helped me (to a degree) to clarify some questions I had in my mind after DD's birth.

I had an induction ending with forceps and a tear amongst other things (after planning a lovely homebirth with no intervention, more fool me!) and what helped me more than anything was seeing that the midwife had written in my notes that I was pushing really well (despite an epidural). It was reassuring to know that I'd done everything I could physically to shift DD before they cracked out the salad tongs.

DH didn't (and still doesn't) get my need to know what happened, but reading what happened has helped me to get things straight in my mind, and to make me much clearer about what I will and will not agree to this time around.

I didn't get my antenatal records but was given the records from my birth (not the medical notes, but the details of all the hows and whys, I didn't ask for them it seemed to be standard) I found them quite interesting and handy to just give to me MW of my second pregnancy since I didn't know a lot of the details they asked about.

If I wasn't feeling great about my ante/postnatal experience I would definately want to look at them.

I'm quite curious to see what is in the full notes for my DDs birth actually, since I heard, via my postnatal MW that one of the MWs at the time thought I hadn't been treated well. I thought my birth was okay though so I wonder what she knew that I didn't!

That's exactly what I need Flisspaps, just to know the process of decision making and what I contributed (if anything). Oddly I spent those 4 days and the birth itself feeling like a bit of a fifth wheel.
Glad it helped you clarify things.

I got copies of all my hand held notes before the midwife discharged me. I panicked the hospital receptionist though as she thought I was planning to complain. When I told her I was just sentimental and wanted a copy to put in DS's memory box she suddenly became a lot more helpful.

You can request an appt with either the consultant who delivered your baby, or a midwife to go through your notes and birth with you and explain decisions and answer exactly the sort of questions you have asked here. I asked for an appt after slight pre eclampsia and emcs and it was very helpful. I just phoned and asked to speak to one of the consultant's secretary (I could remember one of the consultant's names!) and made an appt for a follow up chat about my birth - didn't bat an eyelid. phone the post natal ward and ask about it. HTH.

I didn't realise my pregnancy record would be kept after the birth and stored all manner of pregnancy related but personal stuff (i.e. exemption certificate, scan photo) in the back of the booklet. Spent weeks afterwards chasing for things to be returned to me. On being discharged from hospital I was however given a record of my birth which I thought was pretty standard as they gave me a second copy to pass onto local midwife/HV.