The old partners on wards debate - a question

[Thurlow]

If your hospital allowed partners to stay on the postnatal wards overnight, how many women do you think actually made use of this?

I was debating this with DP the other day. Personally I hate the idea of partners being allowed overnight (and will pay for a private room on the unlikely chance one is available, as will be having an ELCS and so will be in for a few nights) but that's what is allowed now so I'll just have to put up with it.

DP wasn't keen on staying overnight and I can't say I'd blame him. I'd rather at least one of us got some sleep and was functioning ok the next day. Plus DC1 will presumably be returning from the grandparents after a day or so and will need taking to school and having some normality in her life, and I don't want both of us to be zombies. He would only stay overnight if my ELCS was bumped to very late in the day.

I was thinking that surely a lot of women will already have DC and so their partner won't be able to stay every night for a few nights. Or did most women have partners there all the time?

To answer the OP question, the other three women in my bay had partners/visitors there overnight. Mine was at home looking after our eldest.

Woman 1 - her partner kept muttering "for fuck's sake" every time one of my twins cried. Well, I'm sorry about that.

Woman 2 - perfectly respectable partner. No disturbance whatsoever.

Woman 3 - had her teenage son with her. The midwives came to check me tandem feeding my twins, and left the curtain partially open. Teenage boy kept turning around and looking. I was very uncomfortable, had no free hands to press my buzzer. In hindsight I should have shouted, but I didn't want to disturb everybody in the middle of the night.

On balance, 24 hour visitors shouldn't be allowed on wards. I include all visitors, whether they be male partners, female partners, parents or children. I understand why people want them there, but there needs to be proper staffing. And for those mentioning bonding, my dad bonded quite well with me despite the 10 day hospital stay and his limited visiting hours.

It's not the partners disturbing me by making excitable phone calls to their mums at 2am, and watching tv through the night, it's the other bloody women

Partly I agree on this. It's why I've gone to all sorts of lengths to try and get a private room this time round. Last time after a EC the young women thst I shared a ward with I could have strangled. Asking me while I still have a catheterb in could I watch there baby while they have a fag, shower ect.. I'd not even moved myself so how they though I was capable of that I don't know. Maybe they though I had go go gadget arms!

Then there was a couple who called each other 'babe' the end of each sentence and I'm not exaggerating - every sentence.
'Can you pass me a nappy babe'
'Yeah here you are babe'
'What are you having for dinner babe'
'Don't know yet babe'
"What time can you come home babe?'
'Just waiting for midwife now babe'

If would have been able to stay over and I'd had to listen to that all night I would have discharged myself. Honestly.

Also when they took my catheter out, it was dead of night and thankfully the other women were finally asleep. I would have hated the fact that there was a bloody bloke wandering about while I'm lay in a very vunerable position while I have a flimsy curtain shielding my privacy.

I'm dreading this EC in 18 weeks 🙈

I don't understand. I mean, if you don't want your partner then that's fine, but what is your issue with other women having their partner there if they want?

I also, personally, feel that's it a horrible thing to exclude the father like this - it's his baby too and you being precious about wanting it all to yourself is just weird and wrong.

stinking that's awful. Women are so vunerable and let a lot of things go at this stage as they are just in auto mode. I felt like an alien for days afterwards.

user have a read through the whole the whole thread. There are lots of reasons

In fact user I think you are waaaay of mark. It's nothing to do with snuggle cuddlely private time, read the thread properly and you might get idea.

What a strange response

I don't understand. I mean, if you don't want your partner then that's fine, but what is your issue with other women having their partner there if they want?

Oh for goodness sake. Do I have to explain it again? because I don't know the other husbands and post partum women deserve better than being put on a mixed ward 24/7 when she needs privacy more than at any other time of her life.

It's not that I don't love my partner as much as women who WANT their partner there, it's that I don't want three to five strange men in the room when I am trying to recover from birth.

In shops, they have male and female changing to protect privacy when trying on clothes. In a post partum ward, you have to sleep with other couples in the room. Women's privacy is not protected.

We deserve better and I'll keep saying it.

Oh yes user it's because women want to hog the baby
RTFT

I don't understand this bonding argument at all. What's the average stay for a new mum? 2/3 nights? Partners could visit 9am-9pm in our hospital. Do they really need to be there in the night too to form a bond? My partner managed fine with DS and he also got himself well rested at home (and made the house spotless) so when I got home, knackered and sore and teary, I didn't have to lift a finger or even move a muscle as he did everything for me. It was such a relief.

It may be their baby too but as far as I'm aware, men aren't the ones who push the babies out of their vaginas or have major surgery to give birth to them. Men don't need to recover physically, but women do. Hospital stay is about recovery first and foremost, that has to come before bonding.

User
They dont need to be there in the middle of the night to bond. Dh and dcs have bonded brilliantly. They are 20 and 18 and still want to come out with us and go on holiday e5c despite dh not being there at night for the first 4 nights.
He had a couple of hours bonding ime in the delivery suite.
You are the one being precious, they will have more than enough time to bond at home.
After spending 7 weeks on a maternity ward, the last thing you need is more people on the ward at night.
I had high blood pressure, i was dupposed to be resting, bad enough wjen they were moving beds in the middle of the night, would have been 10x worse if visitors still there at one in the morning

You are putting words in my mouth SirC. Where did i say I expected my dh to interrupt a midwife seeing another patient?! You are misunderstanding what I mean by kicking up a fuss. I mean advocating on behalf of somebody who can't do it for themselves. And again, by reference to 'you only wanted a paracetamol' you are deliberately minimising what I have clearly stated was an extremely dangerous and traumatising situation. I was in unbelievable agony after major surgery and brewing a very nasty infection, which took five days and many different kinds of antibiotic to bring under control. Morphine would have been rather more appropriate but hey I was willing to take what they offered (paracetamol) rather than nothing at all. If a man was offered only paracetamol after having his stomach cut open there'd be uproar, but hey it's just women having babies, they can bring in their own painkillers from home. You are either wilfully misunderstanding me or being quite offensive actually.

I don't understand this bonding argument at all. What's the average stay for a new mum? 2/3 nights

You would think so but not anymore

Ine of the Manchester hospitals I was originally at have an 'express recovery bay' if you have a EC, so they want you up after six hours and out within 24! Which I think is ok if your ok with that but what about the other women who are not! And have a handful of small kids at home so need this recovery time to fully recover and rest. The midwife I talked to about said she thought it was very unfair on the ladies. So do I.

Women really do draw the short straw when it comes to things like this.

Kimono really?
I only know what I experienced in our hospital - the stay was much longer than that and this was only 2 years ago.
I had a fairly straight forward VB and I was in for 2 nights.
One woman had an EMCS and was in for 3, another had an ELCS and was in for 2. They weren't in a rush to get rid of us even though they were busy. I was supposed to be discharged after one night but I had a long labour and lost a lot of blood so was feeling quite out of sorts, and was struggling with feeding. The head midwife came and persuaded me to stay one more night because she didn't think I was fit to go home purely on those reasons.
Shocking that women having CS are expected to just bounce back to normal so quickly whoever said that treatment just wouldn't happen in other surgical wards was absolutely right.

Kimono yup same here. In overnight as DD born late afternoon, but discharged by 6pm next day. I was at home for 20 minutes before thinking no, this really isn't right, took my temperature (obv nobody had bothered to check before discharging me), find it is high, told by hospital to come straight back in! Luckily for me, going home 'contaminates' you so you can't be put back in the postnatal ward. I had five days of excellent, responsive care on another ward, in a private room because of infection. Despite being pretty ill, it was a haven of peace and loveliness, with amazing nurses always ready to help me take care of DD when I couldn't. It is what every woman should be entitled to expect after a c section. The contrast to the postnatal ward couldn't have been more stark.

My hospital have started running that too. Tbh with two other children at home, I think I am tempted to stay in a bit longer but if everything was fine and the experience was bad, I'd be off home much quicker. I think for me (assuming there are no other health issues) the policy assumes that there is someone at home to look after you. 24 hours after a section and stairs are still a challenge!

This thread is so depressing - I guess the Portland doesn't need to advertise with horror stories like this

How did obstetric care come to this? I am not usually someone who leaps straight to a "misogyny" explanation but I can think of no other reason. Women are treated as though they are hard wired for pain, in gynecological as well as maternity settings. This is surely something on which MN should be campaigning if it isnt already.

I am being neither offensive nor willfully misunderstanding you zoe - I am disagreeing with you. If you mean advocate then use that word - don't say "hunt out the midwife if need be and make a fuss", which implies a very challenging approach, and expect others to interpret your posts in a way that suits you.

How did obstetric care come to this?

To be fair, obstetric care ^generally* hasn't come to this. There are mixed experiences - we tend to hear the horror stories and not the many good ones.

Well we can agree to disagree then. I'm the meakest least challenging person you can imagine. Make a fuss to me may well mean something different than it does to you. The fact remains that regardless of how you interpret what I said (crikey you have to choose your words carefully on here!), you implied I was complaining over nothing and that I should have just brought a couple of paracetamol in from home! As I had stated the situation I was in and the dire state of care on offer, that was either wilfully misunderstanding me or a low blow.

I also, personally, feel that's it a horrible thing to exclude the father like this - it's his baby too and you being precious about wanting it all to yourself is just weird and wrong

It's a couple of nights and his "right" to bonding (which is unlikely to be affected) does not EVER trump a patient's right to peace and privacy. It's called recovery, not couples bonding time. Do that at home for as long as you like for the rest of your life. Besides which, men can visit for very long hours in daytime. It's hardly going to make them a stranger to the baby if they come back the next morning.

I find the utter disregard of the feelings of other women by some posters on this thread deeply depressing.

And the suggestion by some that the wants of men should take precedence over the wants of women is even more depressing.

I dont get the impression its the wants of men, just the want of the women.
There are no men on this thread so we dont know how they realky feel about it.

I implied nothing of the sort zoe - and you were the one who mentioned a couple of paracetamol.

After my second section, I was treated with impatience as if I was willfully hanging around taking up a bed. I find that shocking. It's fair enough that they make you walk to a chair and back into bed to observe that you can, but after that, it's "now go and shower, now go and fetch your breakfast." I could barely walk. I did as much as I could on Day 2, but on Day 3 I was in agony and could hardly move. I buzzed to be handed my baby and the reply was "you should be doing this yourself by now." I said "I did yesterday and I feel even worse now."

Why are we treated this way? I know a tonsillectomy patient who was waited on and treated 10 times better.

NB This highlights the fact this is a STAFFING PROBLEM. I am not saying my DH staying overnight would have this easier. I am pointing out how badly post partum women are treated in general.

To make us accept that wards are now mixed sex with non patients sleeping in chairs overnight adds insult to injury.

I also think this is a feminist issue. Men like their privacy. You wouldn't let women into men's changing rooms. Men just wouldn't accept it. Yet we have to put up with men on a medical ward overnight, whether we like it or not. To save money on staffing. It's bloody Third World.

You are totally twisting what I said SirC! My exact words were 'It's not acceptable for someone less than 12 hours post-CS to be left without even a sodding paracetamol for the pain'. I did not anywhere say that that's what I thought should be given, or imply that I thought my DH should interrupt a midwife to ask for paracetamol. That is you making things up.

Although in fact, paracetamol was precisely all that was on offer on the postnatal ward I was on, which I find utterly extraordinary given that even after laparoscopic surgery I was given a morphine drip. In fact, at the point at which I was lying in agony I had NO painkillers in my system, none at all, as by 12 hours later, whatever I was given in theatre had worn off. You're deliberately refusing to acknowledge the situation I was in. A bit like whoever runs our local postnatal ward I suppose...And as for only hearing the horror stories, well I know hundreds of mothers locally and not one of them had a good word to say about our local postnatal ward, although all of us speak hugely highly of the labour unit. These are systemic problems, not random unlucky women.

I am making nothing up zoe and have not refused to acknowledge your pain (or anyone else's). We will have to agree to differ.

MissBattleaxe - I totally agree.