Why are Mothers-to-be treated like idiots in the Labour Ward???

[Toothache]

This question has been bugging me for a while. I was already in hospital when I my waters broke with DS. I had been in for a few days with high BP and was 39wks when they broke. It was 3am and waddled to the MW station and told them my waters had gone. They said "No they haven't, just go back to bed"!!!! I INSISTED that my waters HAD broke and they made me hand over my sanitory towel so they could check it. NICE! My waters had broken.
A few hours later the backache kicked in, then contractions. I told them I was in labour and they said "No you're not, it could take hours to get into established labour, go eat your breakfast." As I panted my way through another big contraction then waddled back to bed. Half an hour later I tried to phone DH, midwives STILL insisting that I wasn't in labour. I got a huge contraction and nearly fell in the corridor. A Consultant had some firm words with the Midwives and I was given an internal. I was 4-5 cm dilated and whisked off to the labour ward!!

WHY DIDN'T THEY LISTEN TO ME??????????

Another example:
I got a phonecall from a friend yesterday. Her friend was due her 2nd baby 2 wks from now. She went into labour at home and her boyfriend took her to hopsital. They examined her, told her she wasn't in labour, but that she had a UTI and would kept in for the night. She said "Are you sure, I've had a baby before and this feels like labour". They insisted she wasn't in labour and sent her boyfriend away to fetch her some things. They ran her bath to help with the pain of her "UTI" and 30mins later her baby's head was delivered as she was wrenched from thebath in agony! Healthy 8lb girl. Boyfriend missed everything. .

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY don't they listen mothers??????

grumble for the day.... anybody else any experience of this?

As gettingthere suggested, complainig does work sometimes.

A friend of mine had her baby in the middle of the night, the m/w c**d up the epysiothomy and she ended up with a huge transversal tear, and had to call a consultant to stitch her up. As a result she lost a lot of blood and was very weak.

She asked for a private room which she was given but then a m/w was v rude to her, and demanded that her dh left because it was outside visiting hours...he refused as my friend obviously needed help, and the m/w had a go at them and said something v. rude about the fact the she was in a single room.

After she left the hospital they wrote a complaint letter and later found out that that m/w had received otehr complaints and was therefore suspended/fired or whatever. Anyway she doesn't work there anymore.

So complaining does work!!

I also wrote a letter of complaint to the head of midwifery services about six months after my first child was born (it took me that long to get round to it).

I received a very long and detailed response with steps as to what they were going to do to change it.

Sometimes, they need patients to complain to give them ammunitition in their battles for resources etc. Nobody goes into midwifey so that they can make mothers unhappy - they want to know if that's happening so that they can change it. It really is worth letting them know.

Blimey!All this makes me wish I'd written more than a poxy thank you card to my labour ward.

OK, a couple of things went wrong (contractions really dropped off in second stage; lots of bleeding). If I'm picky/paranoid I would note that they were a little slow to catch the onset of 'pushing', even though I said so... also think I woiuld have porceeded fine (if slower) without the induction.

Nonetheless, couldn't fault the bedside manner (very professional - nice when needed, firm when needed), or the overall standard of careand attention.

I was at the Royal Sussex. It is a teaching hospital, and I was mainly attended by students. I suppose they haven't been in the job long enough to get cynical and disillusioned .

Yhe whole thing was a really positive experience. Happy mummy, happy baby.

i had a student midwife on her last trainee delivery and i can always remember saying to her i needed to push and she looked at me and said you dont need to push its not time yet we will tell you when it is i kept on insisting i need to push to the point where i went to grab he by the throat she said for me to calm down and she would get the midwife for me when the midwife came in a checked me my ds was stuck in the birth cannal and she looked at the student and said you should have got me straight away while looking at me and saying with every oz of energy you got left push and hard because this dumb student treated me like a cild my ds was born blue to the point where they could get enough oxygen in him quick enough i think the funniest part about it was when it was over and i knew the baby was safe i looked at the student and said well i said i needed to push with that she was thrown out of the room because they new i wanted to kill her and still do and hes nine months old

reading threads like this really makes me want to cry because both of my births were truly horrible. ds was born at 33 weeks by c section as in a rountine check up the hospital decided he wasnt growing properly and sent me off to another hospital miles away to have him. i was scanned beforehand (on a more advanced machine) and the consultant told me he'd never seen a better scan but as the other hospital had recommended the section, he didnt want to go against their wishes. i was 19, a first time mum and was terrified. ds was in SCBU for a week there and then transferred back to my local hospital. i was treated like an idiot by most of the midwives there, comments included "well hes your baby, you'll HAVE to look after him" when i was too scared to pick up this little 4lb baby covered in wires and bleeping monitors, and "oohh he doesnt like you" to ds's dad when he started crying. we were interrogated by that same midwife who asked us if we had jobs, were married, had a car, was our house council or private etc. she was even feeding ds wrongly as i later found out (quite important with prem babies). i was so determined to have a normal birth next time around but that wasnt to be either.

i had been having contractions on and off for two days when my waters broke. i went in to be examined and mw said she couldnt see if i was dilated at all because of the waters but if i started to have contractions to go in when they were 10 mins apart because they would need to keep an eye on my section scar. a few hours later, contractions coming every 10 mins i went in to be greeted at the desk with "are they bearable?" "yes" "well why are you here then?". cant do right for doing wrong can you? when i told her what the other midwife had said she didnt seem to beleive me. i was monitored for a while then she said "well nothing is happening yet, although, i said that to one girl and she nearly had her baby down the toilet earlier" great. i was sent to bed with 2 paracetamol and spent the night in pain bad enough to take my breath away. next morning was even worse. i was in agony but noone would believe me and told me i wasnt in labour. ive never been a wimp where pain is concerned and i dont make a fuss but that was serious pain. baby's heart rate started dropping and they said they would be taking me to theatre, then 10 mins later they changed their minds and said it was all ok and they would be starting me on a drip. (in all this time i still hadnt been examined) it was all too much. id had no sleep for three days, i was tired, scared, in pain, i didnt want to be started because i was worried about my scar and i didnt trust them to look after us. i asked for another section. after the first two weeks i was totally on my own with baby and trying to look after her whilst my wound was still so painful was terrible. i could hardly walk for a month let alone do anything else. now im heartbroken when i think about it because i wanted to do it all properly and if i have another baby i dont have the choice anymore. it did really affect me quite badly at first, i cried over it for months and it still gets to me now if im honest.

Hi. I haven't read all the messages in this thread, but I can see the point of the original post very well. Of course we all know of doctors/nurses etc who are truly good people, but when you are treated badly by someone who is a member of the 'caring profession' it sticks much harder. In my first labour I was told by a particularly nasty midwife to 'stop making such a fuss' when I cried with the pain, only to be told on the shift change that the baby was in a posterior position and no wonder I was climbing the walls! When I approached an old GP about a homebirth for my first he told me 'I wish women would stop thinking they knew better than anyone else and leave the job to the people who know what they are doing!!!!'. By contrast, the midwife I had with my second baby was absolutely brilliant, and I couldn't fault her. She made it all so much easier. The point is that in childbirth women are at their most vulnerable and need to be treated with respect and courtesy; childbirth is an awesome thing for anyone to do. By the way, my best friend is a midwife, and another friend is a GP, so I have a balanced and unbiased view.

nightowl. your experiences sound dreadful, and I really sympathise with you. I have had 3 caesareans 1 awful, 2 really good. the quality of care i had with the last 2 was totally different, I was up and about same day and went home the next day. The reason for saying this is that i hope you won't think that all caesareans need to be as painful and distressing as yours have been, and my first was. I was (the first time) also looking forward to a natural birth etc etc, but now i don't have any regrets, just relief at having healthy children. I have a number of friends who have had dreadful vaginal deliveries. If you have another section, you might want to explain your experiences, and make it clear that you don't need a repeat! There seems to me to be no reason for serious ongoing pain these days (I remember from my first i was in agony for 2 months and had to crawl up the stairs for the first 3 weeks). Please don't feel you haven't done it properly.

Oh nightowl, I'm so sorry to hear of your dreadful experience. What a nightmare.
Yes, I do think complaining helps; I did and got a very thorough reply which was quite reassuring about the steps they were taking to avoid it happening again (although strangely I didn't complain about staffing shortages. Wish I had as might have given midwives ammunition to make senior managers take it seriously).

Haven't read all these stories but quite a few and am feeling angry and sad. Angry, mainly coz so many nightmare scenarios could have been avoided. I had a pretty horrible time with dd1. I turned up at the hospital having had contractions on and off for 48 hours. Needless to say I was exhausted but that didn't seem to count for very much as far as they were concerned. They were very dismissive and wanted to send me home but they took my bp and said it was rather high so I should stay so that they could keep an eye on me - what a joke! They sent dh home, gave me tamezepan and put me in a room all on my own. I asked if it was ok to have a bath and they said yes (even though I'd just had a sleeping tablet) and left me to it - I fell asleep in the bath, which was kind of scarey. I then fell asleep for a bit but woke up again and had about two hours of painful contractions, totally on my own. Have never been so scared and lonely in my life. I was crying and crying. I'm not a pushy person (maybe that should read I'm just plain daft) and I kept thinking someone would come - they were meant to be "keeping an eye on me" ffs. Eventually I rang and asked for gas and air and it took over an hour for them to bring it. It still makes me want to cry when I think of those hours alone - I can't believe that I let them treat me like that. I can't believe we let them "send" dh home when I really really needed someone. DD2 was born at home - I was meant to have an independent midwife but she didn't make it in time and DH delivered her! Bit scarey but preferable to the hospital.

Not sure how much kmore of this i can read , I have posted my stories further down. I feel so much pain when reading of all your frightening and horrible stories.

But this is not right is it, with so many stories likethis ?? There is something terrible terribly wrong about the system How can we all go on suffering like this, hatter your situation seemed to call out to me as it reminded me of mine , even though a very different one. It was the fact that they left you alone in a bathroom when someone should have been with you. I think they destroy what could be an amazing experience and turn it into a terrible nightmare. What can we do with this ??There must be someone we can send this thread to ??? I am really really worried to have another and go through the same , it makes me fel sick at the thought. really deep down terrified sick at the thought.

Just read some more of these posts, including HMB's point. You're totally right, HMB, that the actions of individuals should never be used to bash all the members of that group (whether it's a profession, or an ethnic group or whatever). However, I think there are two issues illustrated on this thread which are relevant to the provision of maternity care in this country: firstly there are the actions of individuals who have been thoughtless/unprofessional/uncaring but there is also the more systemic issues: continuity of care (you're much less likely to have a traumatic experience if attended in labour by a midwife you have met before); training; consultant/midwife relationships; hospital protocols etc. These experiences, are not, in my opinion, simply the result of the actions of individuals, but are a reflection of some of the shortcomings of the system as a whole. Which is not bashing all the individuals within the system. I am confident that the vast vast majority of those individuals are doing the best they possibly can, sometimes against the odds. I don't actually blame the individuals who were on duty for leaving me alone: I blame the system in which they were working which either allowed them, or, because of other pressures, forced them to leave me alone.

On a different note - Melsy: you don't have to go through the same thing again - you'll be a different person doing it a second time. You can take with you the confidence and assertiveness to ask for the things you need. I'd recommend a home birth if you can...

Also Melsy, Hatter and all the others who want to do something to change it, the organisations I know of who are doing something about it are AIMS (Association for Improvement in Maternity Services) and the NCT (National Childbirth Trust) which both have websites. There may be others which other people know of? Also, maybe the Royal College of Midwives - good midwives are only too aware of the shortcomings of the system. One of the problems is that once you've had a baby, you're far too busy to complain. (It took me six months.) And as long as women put up with this treatment without formally complaining, why should it change?

You are right meanbean, things will only change if women tell their stories, and not just to the hospitals. You may get a response from the hospital but after that your letter may well be binned. Anyone can become a member of AIMS or the NCT and being part of these organisations means you can take an active role in changing things.

advice on getting your case notes and making a complaint here www.aims.org.uk/ hope that works

this should work

'Cos they do horrible things like leave leg shavings in the bath

I was admitted for and elective c section at 6pm on a Thursday. I was told I was first on the list for the next morning - around 9.00am. My dh arrived at 8.30 and we waited, and waited. At around 11am we asked a midwife what the delay was and were told that an emergency had come in and would been next in. Meanwhile, I have not been allowed any food or drink since 9pm the previous night. At 3.00pm dh finally got cross and demanded to know what was going on and why no-one had the decency to inform us of the delays. I finally went down to theatre at about 3.45pm. The next morning, I noticed that the midwife had written 'DIFFICULT HUSBAND' in my notes!!

Talk about notes that don't reflect reality. I had a 40 hour labor followed by an emergency cs. When I finally got a copy of my notes (it took a year and a formal complaint), they said I was in labor for 2.5 hours! Gee, even if you don't count the time that I was in "false" labor..(never mind that it was a heck of a lot worse than the real thing) .... I was in labor for 10 hours (took them that long to come up with anesthetist and obst. to do cs) after they noticed that I was 7 cm dialated (still in waiting room at this point, my mother had to drag consultant out to check me) and put me in a labor room.
Didn't even bother gettting copy of notes for my 2nd and I'm sure they completely left out the bit where I almost died from a post partum haemmorage and they checked me out of hospital without noticing the note that said I was supposed to get a transfusion.

Hatter, you say : continuity of care (you're much less likely to have a traumatic experience if attended in labour by a midwife you have met before)

Well the likelyhood of that is seriously small as most labour wards are mainly staffed by labour ward midwives wo do not work in the community/surgeries. This is why home births are so much more successful..... and most people who have home births (and who do end up transfering) STILL have great experiences..... they do get much more personalised care.... though I have seen community midwife go against women's wishes in home births too

I will sound like a broken record but bring another woman with you in labour - one that has been through labour before - she doesn't have to be a "professional" doula but her support and empathy (and advocacy if needed) will go a long way ! I have supported women who have had difficult births but all of them are hugely positive despite some of what they had to endure because they had an "ally" who was there for THEM! The more I do this job, the more I am convinced that the results are staggering!

pupuce - the likelihood is indeed small - but increasing - some hospitals and local health authorities do now run systems that aren't based on the usual divide between community and labour ward midwives - so that you are actually allocated a midwife who performs both roles. It's the kind of thing that would be good to see much much more of.

Hatter - I agree... this is even the case in our Trust... but the reality is that even when community midwives do work in the labour ward it may be up to 1 shift in a week.... that leaves another 20 shifts with midwives you have never met.
I was personnaly very lucky that for both my home births I had the same midwives, I comsder myself priviledged. Those midwives were the best in the area (in my opinon of course)

I spent a whole month shadowing a midwife in a labour ward..... made me decide that I could never be a midwife.... it was upsetting to see that quite a few (but not all by any means) really treat this as a "job".... come in at 9 leave at 5, get their cigarette/tea break, fill in the paper work and NOT prepared to listen to some mums to discuss their wishes (how often have I not caught a midwife not even bothering to read - or look for -a birth plan!... their reason when challenged "all these women want the same and we all know they'll end up with an epidural in an hour anyway! ). Also seen (and still see in my practice) how some midwives will ask their supervisor or the registrar if they can do x or y if they feel it is worth it - for the benefit of the mum - and it might not be part of the protocole.... others just say no and don't want to discuss it... lack of offer of water birth is a common problem despite the pool being available (at ALL the 5 hospitals I have been to) or the way women wanting a VBAC are treated is also VERY MUCH dependent on the attitude, view and experience of a particular midwife and it's a DAMN SHAME

sorry for the rant !

BTW - not all community midwives are great/compassionate/supportive.... we've heard plenty of testament to this on this site as well !
To a degree I can understand some midwives' frustrations, they are working in a difficult environment, under funded, under-resourced, full of threats of litigation, full of rules (and some don't always make sense)..... that is also what I discovered in my month in a labour ward.

when i went into hospital, i was screaming because i was in so much pain, and just wanted to start pushing. midwives were saying my room wasnt ready so had to wait in the waiting room, and thought i was just being over dramatic. should have seen the look on their faces when they realised i was 10cm dilated already! i was soon whisked off into a room then

When I had my DD I got conflicting advice about BF but the midwives and doctors were really nice. Even when my DD was screaming the place down, the doctor/midwife held her while I ate my dinner! The only bad thing was at night DD would be screaming and I was extremely tired (I even fell asleep holding her!), but the midwives didn't take her to let me get some sleep.