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?

So tell me where I stated that I thought my DH should interrupt a midwife to ask for paracetamol?

First hospital where I gave birth(in the SE) visitors were allowed all bloodyfucking day. Not at night, thank God! It was hell. Noise all day so you couldn't rest , zero privacy, unknown men gawping at me because of the open curtain policy. I discharged myself the day after an emcs as it was so awful.

Second hospital(east Anglia) set visiting hours and restricted numbers, no overnighters!
it was bliss and I stayed the 3 days needed after another cs.

I will shout and scream to keep men off the wards at night! You want your beloved partner there then pay to go to a private maternity hospital.

Tell me where I stated that I said you said that. Exactly that. Not your interpretation of that.

When I was born in the 60s, mothers had 14 days in hospital post-natally. The babies were taken into the nursery every night, so the mothers could rest and recover. Brought out to the mother if BF.
Visitors were limited to 2 and this was for 1 hour per day.
I'm not saying this was right, but things have gone too far the other way and understaffing is the reason.

To be fair "hunt out the midwife and make a fuss" does rather lend itself to that interpretation.............

I had a private room on the post natal ward as my DD was born premature so they put me separate from mothers with their babies. As it was a private room they said my DH could stay and I wanted him to - he had been with my DD all day after she was transferred to another hospital (I had had an EMCS so couldn't go) but he couldn't stay with her over night. It was a really traumatic experience and it was important that we were together. I think the midwives appreciated that.

My DH was offered to stay the night but took one look at the chair and said, nah, you're alright!

I was in a double room and I would not have enjoyed the other lady having her partner overnight, luckily she was on her own.

Hospital did provide visitor only toilet/washing facilities though.

SirC - "If it's paracetamol your partner is kicking up a fuss about then take in your own."

On no reasonable reading of my posts it is possible to say that I thought my partner should kick up a fuss about paracetamol.

"If it's paracetamol your partner is kicking up a fuss about then take in your own."

Yes, a hypothetical situation in the context of your mentioning hunting down the midwife, making a fuss and paracetamol - which is not 'I said you stated that you thought your DH should interrupt a midwife to ask for paracetamol'.

Itsa DH and I would have loved that option (and would have paid for it).

This thread has deviated from the original OP somewhat, and it would be nice for pp to recognize that not everyone ends up in a postnatal ward with their baby next to them, and maybe sometimes fathers do need to be in hospital too (not on an open ward, I agree)

My postnatal ward had 6 or 8 beds in it. All the partners bar one stayed on chairs overnight, for nights on end. There weren't enough facilities for so many people. Everyone kept the curtains closed all the time (presumably to avoid strange men seeing them at their most vulnerable). Nurses tried to open the curtains to let air circulate, but after a few mins they were closed again. It was really claustrophobic and horrible. No one slept well, the men were wrecks and stiff and grumpy from the chairs.

If I ever have another child, I will discharge myself as soon as I have established neither of us are bleeding to death.

Down thankfully you got peace and rest in the end!! Luckily you astute enough to check on yourself otherwise you could have been very poorly!

The care I recieved with dd1 &dd2 was actually very good - I just didn't like being on the ward as I'm quiet a private person any way so to add fellas to the mix would be too much for me.

Just hitting on the 'women are expected to put up with pain' ect.. That is so bloody true.

When I'd had an eptopic and was a ridiculous amount of pain (it was rupturing) the first dr I seen (a young man) was quite casual about it and even give me an internal examination while I writhing about in agony. He then left the room for what seemed an age must have been around 10 mins to get some codine . I actually got of bed and hobbled to the corridor and shouted for help and an amazing registrar (lady) helped me in bed and gave me two shots of morphine after realising straight away I was rupturing. He got bollocked. I was rushed to emergency tubal removel.

When I was back on the ward I was well dosed up and in no pain what so ever BUT some of the ladies in there were really suffering. There was an elderly lady being sick from pain and I got out of bed and buzzed for help and sat with her. I couldn't believe that there was women in there being given the minimum amount of pain relief. In fact it was pretty disgusting.

I genuinly believe if it was a male situation thrbeould be sedated and comfortable instead of 'just getting through it'

The curse of Eve is still with us

It was clear what you meant. Why invent a random straw man situation that clearly nobody would think was acceptable, if not to imply that was what I was suggesting. And to repeat, I did not mention paracetamol in the context of thinking that that would be an adequate form of pain relief, i mentioned it to illustrate the craziness of not having ANY pain relief, not even of the most basic kind (ie paracetamol), as ought to have been abundantly clear from the context. It is you who has bizarrely taken up the idea that post c-section women should be asking for it. Yes, thinking over it some more, I suppose hunt down the midwife and make a fuss does sound confrontational. I think if I were a husband and my wife was left agonised, infected and ignored for hours on end, I think I probably would be fairly emphatic in suggesting that they were failing in their duty of care. Rude no, outraged certainly. It was genuinely once of the worst and most terrifying nights of my life, and if I say that my second son was born at 26 weeks, you'll see that I don't say that lightly. You setting up hypotheticals about a dh interrupting vital care of another woman to ask for paracetamol is both bizarre and totally irrelevant to the point I was making. To make myself abundantly clear: when basic care fails, which it too often does in postnatal wards today, women may have their lives saved somebody prepared to speak up on their behalf, as forcefully as the situation demands. In an ideal world, that wouldn't happen. But what do you say to the woman tonight sitting ignored, in a pool of her own blood like the poster above?

I am not engaging with you any further or derailing the thread any more zoe. I refer you back to my post at 11.25 and will leave it at that. If you wish to trawl through my previous posts to see what I think about what should happen now be my guest.

Moving on...

Presumably where post natal wards allow partners to stay overnight this is because the majority of women passing through those wards have requested this? If so, the minority (those that don't want men overnight) will unfortunately have to pay for a private room or just put up with it.

Worth those who hate it registering their feelings tho to make sure ward policy does reflect what the majority of women want?

Christ, you are hard work SirC - read what I am saying! I'm not derailing, I was trying to make a serious point about the failings of postnatal wards and how women need advocates to avoid finding themselves in dangerous straits medically when they are alone, immobilised and highly vulnerable. I've read words about how hospitals shouldn't use visitors to plug their own failings. I've not yet heard anything about what we say to women here and now who might have had experience of shockingly poor care and want to avoid a repeat. Sod paracetamol and quibbles about what 'making a fuss' entails, that was your derail not mine. The bottom line for me is that women's right to safe medical care trumps privacy. We'd have both, in an ideal world, of course.

Zoe , the last person in the world who I would think capable of deciding if I had a serious medical need is my dh. How will all these partners decide what is serious and what is just a vulnerable woman feeling scared. What if a number of partners all decide that their partner needs to be seen now. Does the midwife pick the one who is shouting the loudest. It is not that privacy trumps medical need, it is that medical need cannot be met by partners.

We appear to think the same thing of each other zoe.

Precisely birds.

Well I agree that is tricky. Mostly of course dhs must save work though, or hospitals sure as hell wouldn't ever allow them to stay overnight. I dont want to have to bother the run-off-her-feet midwife for a drink of water or to pick up my baby for a feed. And in extremis, you'd hope most people would be sensible enough to know what a haemorrhage looked like or if their partner was suddenly unresponsive or in unbearable agony. I spent a long time in hospitals advocating for my mum when she had leukaemia. Sometimes the loudest voice does get heard, you just have to hope people use it reasonably, which I hope I did. Once that involved a nurse not recognising a major adverse reaction to a drug and me going over her head and getting a doctor to come and advert catastrophe. I'm sure that was a pain for the nurse in question, but it may have saved my mum's life.

In general, my perspective is probably biased by the months and months of my life I have spent in hospital advocating for both my mum and my DS. The reality is that hospitals do rely on patients' relatives an awful lot, so for the most part it must be a liveable compromise between some of them being difficult sods and most of them meaning hospital staffing doesn't reach critical danger levels.

And those without partners or whose partners are with other children. What happens to them or is it just tough. You can't shore up the nhs with people's partners, long term that will be disastrous. I have seen many strategies with regards to the nhs , none of them involved drafting in random men off the street. And if this is such a boon to patient care, why is it not implemented on other wards.

zoe thats all very well, but what do you say to the vulnerable patient who really doesn't feel comfortable having your dh there? The abuse victim, the rape victim, the woman with mh issues? And tbh it's perfectly reasonable for a woman without any of those to just not want your dh present at their most vulnerable and exposed.

The post birth treatment some women have experienced is not acceptable, but neither is it acceptable to expect other women to give up their rights to solve it.

Exactly Lurked
The 'needs' of women advocating for partners to be allowed to stay don't in any way trump the needs of other women's rights to privacy and dignity and to feel safe.
As I said before, it wasn't a 'thing' when my dc were born and we all managed just fine.

The 'needs' of women advocating for partners to be allowed to stay don't in any way trump the needs of other women's rights to privacy and dignity and to feel safe
As I said before, it wasn't a 'thing' when my dc were born and we all managed just fine

This with bells on ^^