What did you want from midwives on postnatal wards?

[Studentmidwife247]

Hi ladies, I am a first year student midwife heading out on my first placement next week. I will be spending a fortnight on a postnatal ward and was just wondering what you most wanted from the staff during your time on postnatal wards? I'm mainly hoping to be a supportive, consistent friendly face who can get to know the women (due to the high risk nature of the ward, ladies are likely to be spending long periods of time on it). I know that staff on these wards are normally incredibly busy, so from your experiences, what would you have wanted from a student midwife to make your stay more comfortable/pleasant? Was it just someone to chat to? Someone to assist with practical skills such as breast feeding? I want to make myself as useful as possible during my time there! Thanks

I'd forgotten about the buzzer being put out of reach! I was in a private room a couple of days post-section, and someone clipped the buzzer back up behind the bed. DD was crying, I couldn't reach her, I called out but no one heard us because the door was shut. I got very panicky very quickly. Completely avoidable!

To not think that breast feeding support was shoving baby on my boob then walking away. It took 5 days in hospital and a change of staff to realise I had inverted nipples and needed extra help.
To ask how the mum wants baby to sleep. I couldn't get to my baby due to catheter and iv. My ds hated being swaddled but the midwives insisted on swaddling him and then moving the crib to far so I couldn't get to him when he was crying. They then ignored my buzzer so ds would wake the whole ward.
If you take baby to let mum get some sleep that's great but make sure you let mum know. I woke to find my baby gone and couldn't get out of bed and nobody answered my buzzer.
I hated every bit of being in hospital.

BF support that doesn't involve a knitted boob, a shrug and a comment of "maybe you should just express " . Not to be told off for getting blood on sheets. To empty catheters before they're so full they are about to burst.
The nicest midwives were the friendly ones who listened and showed empathy. If you are really busy, you can still be nice and explain that you'll be back as soon as you can.

Bf support but also help giving a bottle too. DS was a 36 weeker who couldn't bf so we switched to bottles. We were given very little support and not really shown what to do. It made us feel rubbish and DS lost loads of weight due to the lack of support.
The whole breast is best thing in the NHS isn't nice or helpful when you have no choice but to bottle feed. Please keep this is mind and give lots of support to everyone, no matter how they choose to feed.

Definitely the keeping the buzzer within reach thing. The first night after a section, in the middle of the night so no-one walking by, the BF support woman clipped it on the wall behind the bed where I had no chance of reaching it. Baby needed attention and so, still a little shaky on my legs from the spinal and with catheter in situ, I had to get out of bed and walk over to tend to him. (This obviously also meant lifting him out of the cot.) Thankfully I had a freakishly easy recovery and this didn't cause me too much pain, but it was still a little scary.

Other things would be breast feeding support being better - there were no shortage of people telling me how to do it (several times a day in fact), but they all said different things and it became clear that most had no idea what they were talking about. Several couldn't use the pumps but didn't say so and taught me incorrectly, which didn't help with the issues we were having, and one tried to persuade me just to give up completely. Oh, and perhaps turning down the lights at night so that you could sleep.

In spite of this, post-natal support was actually pretty good!

Consistent breastfeeding advice
Telling women with tvs on loud to use headphones
Empathy
Putting baby within reach

To have read my notes, and to introduce themselves.

Also, after the midwife raised the bed/mattress so high my feet didn't touch the floor, the batteries then ran out in the automatic handheld thing which raised the bed/back of the bed up. And weren't replaced. So it was agony to get in and out of bed (with stitches and awful bruising). They couldn't find any batteries apparently. Post-natal care after I had my son was appalling I'm sorry to say!

I am aware this might not make me very popular, especially as the midwives were all, without fail, very lovely and all very, very busy... But....

I would have loved some empathy. I had a precipitate labour/delivery (it's OK, I can feel your sympathy draining already....) and I could hear all the MWs going round, talking to the other women, sympathising with their long births, chatting to them and reassuring them. Then they'd get to me and it would be 'OMG! You're the lady who didn't realise she was in labour! You're so lucky!' which I accept and appreciate, but I was left in shock afterwards. I still couldn't accept I'd just given birth to DD even when we were discharged the next evening.

We were readmitted on day 5 (me because my BP was stratospheric, DD because she lost nearly a pound in those 5 days - and she was only 6lbs2 to start with) and I wasn't 'the woman who had a really quick delivery' anymore. The MWs couldn't have been more helpful and friendly, especially as I was in a side room on my own so as not to introduce potential infection to the new-newborns. They went out of their way to make sure I didn't feel lonely.

I would have loved someone to help me during the night when I still had no feeling in my legs, couldn't therefore get out of bed and attend to baby who was constantly crying. After trying to get out of bed I had to wait lying on floor for health care assistant to find me and help me to loo and back to bed. Whole thing was a nightmare.

I wanted some help with breastfeeding. DS came from
Nicu to the general ward on day 5, and I was clueless. He'd been tube and bottle fed up to then.

I also wanted someone to know I existed. I tried to spend as much time as I could on nicu, but this meant that I missed my drugs and food - no one told me when anything happened, so I invariably missed out and spent my first night hungry and cold (no actual blankets, I was given some extra sheets until
morning).

If someone wants to co-sleep because they think a newborn wants to be cuddled and not put in a fish tank, and anyway post-section they can't get the baby out of the fish tank, then just set them up to do it safely.

I had one lovely midwife say "what a long feed " and she went away to find me a bed rail so that whichever side the baby was in she couldn't fall out. It made a huge difference after a traumatic labour and crash section just to be able to doze and cuddle and feel like a mum rather than a dysfunctional piece of meat.

Not putting the buzzer out of my reach.

Not putting my phone out of my reach.

Not putting my baby out of reach.

Not insisting I got out of bed for a shower before my DP arrived so I "looked nice for him". I would have preferred to leave my newborn with him than with, well, nobody!

Not forcing me to stay a 5th night in hospital after a long birth and EMCS. I needed rest and support and the ward certainly could not provide it.

Short but regular visits, even just a friendly head popped round the curtain, just to check all is ok every now and again. I was knackered, disorientated and alone with my first baby and ENGLISH, therefore to me the big red button was obviously an emergency button and only to be used in dire emergencies. You can't just expect post-natal mums to ask for help when they need it. Most people don't want to be a pain and assume they SHOULD know what they're doing. In the end when I finally pressed the darn thing it was all "why are you crying? Why didn't you press the button earlier?"

Empathy.

It might be normal for midwives, but it's not for the mum. I just wanted someone on my post-natal ward who seemed to have a bit of empathy for a post-operative, hormonal brand new mum.

I was on the ward for 5 days and there were two experiences which really stuck in my mind and I found hard to manage at the time. The first was that with a baby in NICU, I missed most drug rounds, but was made to feel like a complete pain for asking for pain relief (post-emcs) rather that sitting in my bed waiting for the standard rounds.

The second - and I actually brought this up with a horrified senior midwife in my debrief a year or so later - was that I was put in a side ward with other mums with babies while mine was in NICU. I understand they were very busy and couldn't immediately put me in a quite side ward, but that first night I was surrounded by mums with their three-hour old babies who quite understandably didn't want to go to sleep. I was in hysterics. I was exhausted after a 3 day labour, in pain, and my baby wasn't with me. I went to the desk at midnight sobbing my heart out and got not one ounce of empathy at all. Eventually they said there was a bed free in the SCBU side-ward (so no babies) and I could move there, but made a great huff about moving my bed in the middle of the night. The whole time this was happening, not one of the HCPs said anything nice to me.

I read my notes later during my stay and someone had written "12.10am, had to move bed, mother was overly emotional."

You sound lovely to ask, OP. I think if you just remember that any patient is a patient and might be scared or upset, you'll be a wonderful midwife.

It's so sad to read of so many bad experiences. I was in a private room in which my husband could stay with me all night on a little camp bed. That solved so many of the issues I have read about (call button out of reach, not getting food, etc). He could do a lot of my non-medical care so the midwives only had to do obs and bfing support. It also meant I felt emotionally supported during a very difficult time (I'd had a section I didn't want and my premmie baby was in NICU rather than beside me).

I wanted someone to come to check we were OK after our elective section but nobody did...after we'd been given a bed we were left alone straight from theatre for over an hour.

I would also have liked to be offered tea more often (at all in fact!)

A hand getting out of bed at 3am after a 2 day labour, 4th degree tear and catheter so I could clean the meconium off DD would've been nice. And my bloody painkillers when I asked for them, not 2 hours later.

I agree with making sure sheets and bathrooms are clean, and that women definitely have enough pads etc.

The postnatal ward we were on was horribly noisy all night long, people talking etc as well as baby noise. Keeping that in check would have been nice

Also agree with policing visitors. My DSis snuck in her (lovely) teenagers to see the baby on day 2. They stayed for hours and hours and they shouldn't have been there in the first place, and I really wasn't feeling up to chasing them out myself.

Please show enough empathy not to a) randomly grab boob b) force baby's head into boob and c) call 6 hour old baby naughty and lazy. But by asking here I am pretty sure you have got those covered already :)

I would've just liked someone to treat me as a human being and not just another body .

I also got a very opinionated midwife ask me why I wasn't breast feeding which made me feel very uncomfortable . It was not asked in a curious way , the judgment was seeping out of her.She said it was a shame I wasn't breast feeding ( it still angers me 10 weeks on)

I did also have a lovely midwife who did everything in her power to get me home as I was dying to get out .

I know they're all so busy but a little more compassion wouldn't go amiss sometimes.

1st time round, post EMCS: Someone to be sympathetic and reassure me that I probably wasn't going to die, and also to spot sooner that the level of pain I was in was due to complications, not just normal post CS pain. Someone to help me up and to reach things, not to tell me I would only get better if I did things myself (thus giving ex-p carte blanche to do nothing to help at all and dismiss my complaints as me being a lazy cow/wuss). Someone to realise bright lights, shouting loudly etc. all night long wasn't going to aid my recovery. I did get some lovely midwives who really helped with expressing and BF which saved my sanity.

2nd time round, post ELCS: I was so blissed out at being so pain free compared to the last time, and DS took to bf so easily that I just needed to be left to it really! The midwives were quite happy to let me have a little 'babymoon' (hate that word but ykwim) and only bothered us when necessary. Having our own room helped so much. I wasn't as keen on the 'breastfeeding supporter' who, when I said I had bf DS1 for 2 years, pulled a face and said 'well you know more about it all than me then' and left!

Just someone to be nice to me and not cross all the time.

Cross that I was brought in by ambulance - so inconvenient, where are we going to put you; cross that my waters broke in the night - was I sure I hadn't wet the bed? (OK, they were antenatal, but it started things badly); cross that I had no nappies or cotton wool or sanitary towels (emergency ambulance, remember?); cross that I was carrying my baby around - you're not allowed in here with the baby! Put it back in the cot!; cross that I didn't know how to put on a babygro or bath the tiny scrap; cross that I wanted to breastfeed (the only one on the ward, such a noisy baby...) You get the picture.

I forgot - I wish someone had taken me seriously when I kept pointing out that DS1 was a very yellow colour. Several midwives just said hmm well let's just keep an eye on it but did nothing. When we were due for discharge (been in 7 days already at that point), the paed came to examine DS (by this stage he was practically orange, he looked like Peter Andre) and was shocked he hadn't had his blood checked. We had to stay in for another week until he improved. So - someone to take mothers' concerns seriously.

Water and food would have been good.

someone who showed an ounce of empathy towards a first-time mother who had just gone through a traumatic birth and had a very small, weak baby struggling to feed. They were pretty thin on the ground in my hellish ward, though when DD went all weak and floppy and the pediatrician bollocked a few people, it got somewhat better.

They were fucking awful.