Man sleeping on ward

[heylottie]

I am on a 4 bed maternity ward, a small ward with beds divided by curtains. 5 day old dd currently in SCBU getting help with low blood sugar.

Its been awful but I can't fault the care and kindness of the nursing staff who are great

But

Last night a woman was admitted at 11pm, I didn't see her as curtains drawn. I was aware that someone was sat in the chair next to my curtain, ie two foot from my bed. I got up at 2am and went to the loo.

Turns out her husband was asleep on the chair.

I don't know if I am coming or going at moment, but I don't think this is appropriate is it? Woman was asleep. I mentioned to staff and they said oh he's waiting for his baby to settle in the incubator. Whilst I appreciate that, could he not have waited in the family tv room down the corridor?

Or am I being over sensitive? I just think this is a vulnerable enough time without this.

My DS is not disabled though...no disability diagnosis. Still had additional needs for a time though.

And I would be happy with a thirteen year old daughter changing in a mixed safe changing room that consisted of private booths opening onto a public space.

^ a lot of shops have these sort of changing rooms.

Actually, thinking even more on the subject, I would have been hugely pissed off having to queue for the toilets or showers on the post natal ward because they were all occupied by a bunch of partners/husbands. I still had to pee every 5 minutes and had stitches and bleeding bits I wanted to wash frequently.

I had an emcs with ds1 and a forceps vbac with haemorrhage after ds2. Yes, nights were a little tougher without dh, but there were staff available always less than 5 mins after pressing the call button.

It would have been absolutely horrendous to have other adult men overnight when I was at my most vulnerable sleeping. Partners visiting times were 9am-9pm.

capsium - only someone who doesnt have a 13 year old daughter could come out with such a breathtakingly naive comment.

Hell would freeze over before I allowed mine to use a chaging room with adult males around her . In what world could that ever be okay?

And how can you possibly police it being " safe"?

Some of the points on here have changed my mind.

Previously I would have thought that it would be fine for a partner to stay the night, but had maybe assumed that all partners were devoted and not at all interested in other patients... Which is clearly not necessarily the case.

At this point it isn't so much about women vs men but patients vs non patients. I'd be equally uncomfortable with a female partner hanging around after dark, in a way that I would not be made uncomfortable by another woman who has also just gone through a birth.

People who have just gone through very traumatic experiences should clearly be the exception - ideally in a separate room or at least being allowed visitors at any time.

Swayingbranch - yes it's disturbing, isn't it?

I do think that a maternity ward should be treated as a female space - women are entitled to some privacy having given birth. Extreme cases, like Red's, should be respected and I hope she does get her private room and her partner can stay with her.

In general though, I just see this as yet another way men encroach on female spaces tbh. I hate mixed toilets too. Men's toilets stink. It's bad enough living with 3 very beloved males.

I also remember, when I was in the ward with ds1, there was a teenage single mum in the bed opposite me.

She was lovely, but very, very fragile and vulnerable. Her mum visited her, and I had some nice chats with her - but she was extremely tearful a lot of the time

I think it would have been very difficult for her if husbands/fathers were staying in the wards overnight.

FGS, Buffy, do you have to be so bloody reasonable?

The care on my maternity ward was truly abysmal. I think I saw more of the Bounty woman than any midwife - care has been cut down to the bare bones.

A feminist-designed maternity ward would be worthy of a thread of it's own I think.

The overcrowding/resources issue is fair.

I still however believe that where something has gone wrong and yet the mother is on the ward for a time and not in a private room (as happened in ipswich's case - so sorry for your loss ipswich) then the partner should be allowed to stay. This will be very rare and very few men, so no resources issues should arise.

Yay Buffy!

Hurray buffy! I think, with a feminist hat on, that there is a degree of institutional misogyny reflected in the neglect of postnatal care. The ewes at our local family farm get more space than the women on the postnatal ward! How can it be acceptable that women who are immobile, in great pain and responsible for a new baby feel forced to cling onto their husbands at night not because we love them dearly (though of course we do!), but because we know that there is nobody else who will provide us with care and support during the night?! I know midwives are overstretched, but my own and many friends' accounts of the lack of care they experienced are horrifying.

To name some - 48 hour back to back labour, forceps, theatre for 3rd degree tear. Asks for some toast, as hasn't eaten in 2 days. 'Well, I'm not sure, it is late at night you know'.

An hour after the bell first rung, begging for pain relief, crying in agony from infected c section- 'why didn't you ring sooner, you were told weren't you that you need to keep on top of the pain relief'. Profers a paracetamol.

A friend told off for making a mess on the floor after haemorrhage, had got out of bed to find someone because nobody answering the bell.

I could go on. If anyone gets cross, it should be at a system so stretched that it dehumanises women at one of the most vulnerable moments of their entire life.

Heck yes to feminist maternity provision!! How would it look?

Kingston hospital now allows husbands to stay and has recliners for them. I think if the rule is extended to everyone its ok but not sure about one rule for one and another for someone else.
I was admitted to a postnatal ward when I had a bleed at 40 weeks late at night and there were no antenatal beds. There were a couple there clearly on a feeding regime with no regard for anyone else and were shouting across the bay and making noise throughout the night. I do think in these situations couples need to be considerate and get warnings if behaviour is anything less. I had 1 hour sleep before i was induced as a consequence which was not ideal.
Otherwise the partner policy really worked. I have no problems with a privacy thing as the curtains were always closed but noise in that one instance was an issue.
I ended up very unwell and had an emergency c section, without my husband around the experience may not have been such a positive one in a traumatic situation.

If you are on an open ward, you can't have ANYONE to stay with you. same as all other shared wards. It's now illegal to mix sexes on wards and if a man was really allowed to stay on a maternity unit with other women in the bay, the hospital is liable for thousands of pounds if fines. Single sex wards are taken very seriously nowadays. If you want your husband to stay go to a birth centre or have a home birth. Or go private. It is just not appropriate to have men on an open maternity ward overnight.

And yet it was taking place when I had my second child, as I posted up thread. The man next to me was not the only man there overnight. If every father had wanted to stay, things would have become unmanageable, just due to the number of people in a small space and with inadequate facilities. So there has to be rationing.

'Non patients are allowed to stay on children's wards and in exceptional circumstances on other wards'

No, they aren't. Unless you are in an isolation room (we were because our child had no immune system), parents are not allowed to spend the night with their children in ICU unless their death is imminent. Imminent DEATH is the only exceptional circumstance.

I've always stayed when my two have been admitted to general children's wards, it was assumed by staff one of us would and they would just bring the bed round. last time I did it, every child but one in the 6 bed bay had a parent staying: 2 fathers and 3 mothers. However, it did appear to be the policy in the hospital we go to that parents could not stay overnight in ICU or High-Dependency Units. But clearly the practice differs according to the region/trust/hospital.

I do worry that, as people stay more routinely, care-giving reduces with relatives expected to do what nurses once did. That may be, or become, a problem.

Yes we need a campaign for better maternity care.

If I was planning maternity care from the start, I'd have pre-natal/induction/monitoring wards which were a mix of beds and chairs and sofas and even TVs, somewhere where women could stay and relax (yes, I know that's a bit of a stupid word to use for it ) while being checked over. I was on that was for 12 hours and it was a standard ward but realistically, most of us there didn't seem to need an actual bed. We just wanted to be near nurses and potential pain relief

Then I'd aim to have enough rooms for women to spend that first night in the private room where they gave birth, especially considering a high percentage of women only need that one overnight stay.

If the woman needed to stay in more nights, I'd probably agree with something that resembled a ward but with bigger bays (those bloody normal sized bays are no good when you've got an incubator in there too!). If women are staying in for several nights and need monitoring then it's probably not realistic to have them all in private rooms due to nurses needing to keep an eye on all the patients, just as they do on other wards. But a bit more space would be nice. There could be side wards where partners could stay, and side wards where they didn't, to cater for both. There would be enough medical professionals of one sort or another to look after mums and babies - nurses, midwives, lactation specialists, and even just people who are there to help lift the baby out of the cot and bring mum a cup of tea while she tries to feed. I'm not sure I would actually have wanted my partner stay overnight with me every night if I was in for several nights. More and effective support would have been better. But there should be provision for women who would rather have their partner there every night of their 5 night stay, for example.

But to pick up on some points above, I completely agree with Angela's comment that I do worry that, as people stay more routinely, care-giving reduces with relatives expected to do what nurses once did and I can't shake the thought that letting partners stay overnight is simply doing that, and that's not ideal. In my ideal maternity care women should be looked after and supported by professionals.

And having said all that, while I think much better maternity care is a priority... the funding it would take to provide the kind of things I've said above... There are so many other places I'd rather that funding was spent in the NHS. Funding for one or two more staff on shift every night would be a high priority for me. Funding for anything else comes well below cancer treatments, improved children's wards, dozens of other things.

I do worry that, as people stay more routinely, care-giving reduces with relatives expected to do what nurses once did. That may be, or become, a problem.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. This would leave mothers without local family support in a hugly vulnerable position. This could mean compelled to pay for a private carer, having to accept help from toxic relatives, having to accept help from a former partner.

As the nursing is taken more and more into amateur hands it is very easy to see this straying into medical areas. A small example would be DP/DM/DSis going to get pain relief rather than it going direct from the nurse to patient. If the relationship between patient and unofficial carer is anything less than perfect just imagine the opportunities for abuse in this scenario.

I had my third DC during a flu epidemic. An awful lot of good practice went out of the window because of staffing shortages.

The fact that they offer you paracetamol after major abdominal surgery shocks me enough to be honest!
Bring on the proper pain relief.

Agree. Offering a paracetamol is almost rude .

I don't take paracetamol for a mild, wine-induced headache, let alone for a slit-you-in-half-and-haul-out-a-human situation.

So much so that for recent surgeries I have kindly provided my own pain relief and declined their rubbish offerings.