Recent experience of Barnet hospital and Victoria Ward

[Sarah2506]

Hello I am booked to have my first DC by ELCS at Barnet in June. Almost everything I read is negative and I haven't been hugely impressed by my ante natal care. I'm worried that I might go into labour early and then have to hang around in labour waiting for my section which is needed because I have fistulas that will tear through if I had baby naturally. However I'm mainly worried by what happens after. Has anyone been on Victoria ward recently? I hear of women being left in pools of blood, not being helped with getting up to the loo, getting no help with feeding etc. post ELCS I'm not going to be able to move unaided and am worried they will send DH home at 8pm and I will be alone. Because of my bowel disease I will have issues getting to the loo in time anyway. I'd love to hear some positive experiences. I'm aware that people tend to post more about negative experiences but help appease my fears if you possibly can! X

While the labour ward staff are fantastic, the same cannot be said about Victoria Ward. The care to new mothers' ican only be described as appalling and in some cases dangerous. With first child, when asked for help with breast feeding was told (kid you not) "Do yourself a favour and get a bottle. It's very busy here." I have another horror story, which happened very recently, but I don't want to scare anyone reading. Hope your birth went well.

I'm a dad and, simply put, the antenatal ward (and Victoria ward in particular) is a TRUE HELL ON EARTH! There are so many different reasons I would never ever let my wife go back in there. This is a personal opinion and I'm sure there are many positives stories out there but, sadly, ours is not one of them.

My wife had to be induced at 38w due to GD. When we were booked in for induction, we were told it would be a long process. However, when we were admitted we were not made aware there will be no room in the delivery suite for another two days... yes... 48 HOURS! (and as it happened 33h after the waters broke). This resulted in a number of examinations, which in turn contributed to the infection, emergency c sec, antibiotics for both mum and the little one and an extended 7 day stay in hospital. It's an utter disgrace! And it wasn't necessary and could have been easily avoided.

All of that excludes the agony and pain just to then be told “sorry we don’t have a room in labour ward and we don’t know when we’ll get it”. While many midwives we’ve come across on Victoria ward were great, there are some who should not do their jobs as they clearly don’t have a compassion or willingness to help, including some who are pregnant themselves! That’s providing you actually find someone as they seem to be oblivious to their patients needing extra care… sometimes even angry at the fact you even approach them. I’ve been even angrily asked “Are you a medical professional to ask questions about active and established labour?” when telling them my wife might be ready to go over to the labour ward.

Overall, we are happy with the labour ward (the surgeons, anaesthesiologists and midwives in the actual labour ward were fantastic) but Victoria ward is a horrid and scary experience.

If anyone from Royal Free or maternity unit reads this (and you've told us you do) then know this: we've sent the feedback using both official form and a separate email to the person singled out in the hospital as the main point of contact for giving feedback (her name is on a poster in the milk prep room) but have never heard from anyone, hence why I'm posting it here. You've got some serious work to do.

I had my DD there just over 2 years ago and I was induced due to GD. The antenatal ward was a bit dingy and I did contract a kidney infection as there were a lot of check on my "progress". I did tell a midwife that I thought I had cystitis but it was brushed off and I get kidney infections easily. However the majority of staff were amazing.

It took forever to induce me tbh. But the actual midwifery team were brilliant.
I had to stay in for 7 days after, due to the infection that showed up in DD (as we had has shared blood when my kidney infection began before active labour began). I found some of the older midwifery team to want to cup feed dd as I was struggling to establish bf. It was one of the bf team that got us sorted for that.
Generally it was a positive experience. I would add that if I decided to have another, I would want to have them there.