Am I the only one who has no faith in midwives - contentious topic I know....

[RedFraggle]

I had a bit of a nightmare delivery and ended up with an emergency c-section so possibly my views are slightly warped...

I am having an elective this time around for various reasons, but I have to admit that I felt a huge flush of relief when I realised it meant I wouldn't have to rely on any midwives as I have no faith or trust in them at all. Can I be the only woman on Mumsnet who would really prefer NOT to have midwives involved in their birth? All the threads I have seen seem very pro-midwife and I was just curious...

With the exception of my mil ,and in my limeted experience,the profession seems to attract the schoolyard cliche mums who you wouldnt want to be near when you could stand up for yourself, let alone when you are vunerable.
Im pleased that you met an inspirational mw and im sure you will carry on in her stead, however there is a level of attitude that is exhibited that is deplorable and remember pregnant women are vunerable.
Mw 's need much, much, much more finances and support to improve the services they offer.

have read this with interest as it seems to be pot luck!

must admit avoided one of my community midwives as she just made me nervous (always making me wait for ages at home and in docs germy surgery) she was v young as well, with no children, and very snappy and impatient -also moaned about other pregnant mums to me . as they keep it a secret who the mw is at ante natal so just saw doc always after that. (she left a while ago. I did have in birthplan that she would NOT be welcome at the birth or after thought) seeing another midwife now- older, v experienced, makes me feel i can rely on her totally and baby won't dare mess her around-am due v soon)

However community mw aren't part of the delivery team of midwives so will have complete strangers on the day. Am bit nervous as went in for monitoring recently and the mw yawned all the time, kept her eyes shut and wobbled about, couldn;t talk properly -cleary was v tired. -it was very alarming. Not sure if she was overworked or had been out clubbing all night!! sorry, seem v age-ist....

nope Hatrick, after the birth, when we were at home, she visited and on both occasions called our DD a boy.

My community midwife was superb, she was a real "old school" horsey type and not pushy about anything (basically guided you in the right direction but accepted that you were a person with your own opinions)

She took us around the local maternity ward before we had DS and told me that she had worked there for some time but really hadnt enjoyed it. Because she was a very "capable" midwife she more often than not got allocated to the room where patients who either had problems with their labour, babies had problems or were just difficult patients wentin the end she got disallusioned with being based at the hospital and left.

I have had excellent experience with midwives. The home birth rate where I live is high as so many people want to have the opportunity to be looked after in labour by our fabulous community midwives.

I hated my midwife _ my dt2 nearly died during delivery - the mw's first twin delivery and she refused to call the anethesist and OB even though I knew I was in labour she kept telling me to walk around so dt1 was born onto the floor, dt2 emergency section 45 mins later. when i went back for my 6 week check i met her in the corridor and she said " I stll have nightmares about your delivery" What a twit!

During the birth of my DD, I had one to one care with a fantastic midwife and gave birth naturally with the help of a ventouse. I was very hapy with the care I received from the hospital in all respects and felt extremely positive about the whole experience.

Later that year we moved away from London and I gave birth to my DS at a local hospital. The mws were incompetant to say the least. They told me to start pushing when I was only 7 cm dilated so wouldn't be able have an epidual until a doctor informed them otherwise. Even though my son was lying in a face up position, they allowed me to labour in the second stage for 7 hours without recognising very obvious signs of obstructed labour. They accused me of not pushing hard enough.

Having given birth naturally the first time around, I knew things weren't progressing but no one listened. My epidural fell out and I ended up with no pain relief for about 5 hours until a consultant said 'emergency section now'. The operation and after-care were very good, but had the mws also realised that my son was a big baby (10lbs) and monitored me more closely, i would not have suffered so much. I am so lucky that both my Ds and myself came through ok.

I am now 38 weeks pregnant with my third and terrified of going through anything like that again. Thankfully, I am back living near the hosptial were I had my DD and the same good team of midwives are still working there, but I'm very shaken by my terrible experience with the provincial mws who just wandered in and out of the room all night saying ''just keep pushing".

This time I may have to have another section and although I prefer giving birth naturally as the recovery time is far quicker, I am scared out of my mind that I'll go through another terryfying ordeal. I keep thinking I or my child may die. I agree with others on here that a bad experience with mws can leave your very traumatised and feeling helpless. I have now lost faith in them and now put my trust in doctors and consultants.

It is clear mws are very overstretched and I hate with passion the whole shared care policy. I believe every woman should have least one midwife throughout her pregnancy and delivery to provide consistency. An ideal maybe but necessary IMO. If you get a useless or horrible midwife then that's not good news, but my experience of having three women running in and out of the delivery room like headless chickens made the situation far more stressful for me and I felt they put both my son and I at risk.

Reading the Independent report on women this week dying certainly dosen't help at all. The lack of resouces and horror stories of substandard care from all over the country that I read about has totally put me off having any more children!

No I wasn't impressed either ante natally or post natally. I was on my fourth pg with no live birth to show for it and still felt like I was on a conveyor belt. Also I was exposed to chickenpox at 30 weeks and am still waiting to hear the results of my blood test. Daughter is now 5 months old ....Never saw the same person twice.

And none of the community midwives spotted that daughter was not latched on properly. Breastfeeding knowledge was woeful - ended up paying for a bf consultant who was infinitely better.

TBH I thought they were full of platitudes with limited real expertise. Lots of "oh your body will tell you what to do in labour" and "oh breast feeding's natural - you're doing fine" with little concrete help in either case when I was faced with a 10lb baby, family history of failed labour and cord round her neck.

Haven't had time to read all postings but after traumatic first birth also have a virtual phobia of mws and am very pleased to be having an elective this time round. Of course there are lovely midwives, met many during my antenatal care, but unfortunately it's the minority of rude or incompetent ones who do terrible damage both physically and mentally. The problems especially severe in London I don't know anyone who didn't have to deal with at least one bolshy or nasty mw, you need to stand up to them and if they're not sympathetic enough demand you see someone else but if you're giving birth that's the last thing you're capable of doing. That's what your dp or birthing partner needs to be briefed to do.
Of course it's all down to the government's disgraceful lack of investment in maternity services -a friend who's training to be a mw who would be ideal in the job is worried even after qualifying she won't get a job as a) there aren't any because the govt thinks midwifery is a soft touch and knows the few with jobs will just have to carry the burden and b) outrageously, she is middle class and there is a bias in her area against middle class midwives. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? Imagine if I rewrote that sentence saying black midwives?

My sister's a midwife who gave up practising for a bit cos she was so upset by the level of care they could offer (understaffed and overloaded, too little time for each mother, some of the older m/ws shockingly rude and judgmental about the women which was not how she was trained). Then she switched from a big city hospital to a smaller one & it's loads better - think those who've said it's especially bad in london prob right. Dunno about the birth yet but for antenatal care, m/ws i've had all brilliant compared to my GP, who knows sod all and usually leaves me panicking unnecessarily.....

Message withdrawn

Just to say my midwife was wonderful, the only thing I miss about pregnancy is her.

I'm so glad I read this thread. It makes all my hard work seem worthwhile. There's nothing lifts my spirits more more than to work a 45-hour week, unpaid, and then come onto MN for a bit of light relief and read 'bitch', 'incompetent', 'rubbish', 'horrid', 'crap', 'utterly evil', 'really stupid', 'clueless', 'madwitch' and 'bollocks'.

But, hey, after my three years of training I'll probably be told there's no job for me anyway - so I can get back to my original career of being a 'schoolyard cliche'. What a stroke of luck for everyone.

I had my 1st birth in hospital - midwives very busy and rushed off their feet.

I had my 2nd birth at home - fantastic community midwife delivered...the difference was unbelievable. As deliveries for community MWs are less frequent, they seem to take pleasure in helping women to birth (more of a novelty?) as opposed to MWs in hospital who were dashing round wisking babies off conveyor belts whilst I was there.

HB rules!

Snaf, no one's getting at you personally. This thread could be useful, I would have thought, as an indication of how to be the sort of midwife women love rather than hate.

My big thing would be for midwives to know all they can about bfing and be able to offer practical (and sometimes literally hands on) guidance.

Albertson, it's interesting you wrote that last sentence as I found the coloured mw's (in the maternity ward) were much more sympathetic and helpful than the white mws who just told me to keep on with b/f even when it was obvious to them that nothing was coming through then. One had the temerity to tick me off for giving her a bottle in front of my family at visiting time, blaming my family for pressuring me to get DD a bottle. Er, I'm an adult even if I had just given birth, I'm not a p/over and my Mum b/f all four of us, so she was completly barking up the wrong tree there as regards family support for b/f. In contrast the coloured mw who seemed to be covering the night shift, happily gave me a bottle and even toured the ward restoring babes to cots where their mums had dropped off feeding them. I dimly remember DD being taken from my arms by someone before I sunk into sleep again. In my limited experience, I'd advocate coloured or Indian mws over caucasions for personal care and attention.

[hmmm]

As a doula I am mostly totally uplifted and encouraged by the wise, kind midwives I encounter and whom I encountered with my own births. I did meet the midwife from hell once: the good news is only once, the bad news is she was quite newly qualified and so is probably out there somewhere still spouting her obnoxious views (especially her very negative views about babies) and undermining women's confidence...

I totally disagree with the person who said doctors were better. Because doctors are only called in when labours get complex, their whole idea of birth becomes completely skewed and in my view, they simply unintentionally lose the ability to trust a woman's body to birth her baby. If you only ever see malpositioned babies you start to believe it happens all the time. If you only "pop in" for a few minutes you never see labour as a whole process, just as a series of snapshots and so you do not realise how much your "popping in" disturbs labour. Midwives, on the other hand, see normal birth more often and so their faith is not so steadily undermined.
I note how many of you refer to midwives in the plural...if we really had One Woman One Midwife care, you would not have this feeling of being shoved and prodded along an assembly line.

Snaf, people are offloading about some truly terrible experiences. It doesn't mean we all hate midwives or think all midwives are terrible. But these experiences, and the shocking jump in maternal mortality, show something is going very, very badly wrong.

FWIW when I had ds three years ago, there was only one midwife on duty looking after 7 women in labour. In a midwife led unit. She couldn't even transfer me to the hospital birth centre because there was only one midwife there, too! That's why I ended up with a third-degree tear - midwife wasn't there to tell me not to push at that point (and I wasn't in the real world, had gone into myself - needed someone who knew what they were doing around to guide me). She was great, but the situation was bloody dangerous.

This was at St Thomas's in London, a very high profile well-known leading teaching hospital. If they can treat women like that there, I hate to think what is happening elsewhere.

One of my sisters was lucky and had a lovely student midwife (she was in labour for three days so had a succession of qualified midwives but the student really stood out and stayed until the bitter end).

My other sister had the midwives from hell on the post-natal ward, aggressive bullies who announced they had 'discovered' that she was on antidepressants (which, in fact, she was very open about and was fully documented in her notes). They treated her as if she was some kind of awful woman intent on harming her baby. Instead of the victim of a serious assault who had done her research and been very careful to ensure the medicines she took were appropriate. They kept on at her to get up, do this that and the other, until she got swollen feet. Stupid women forced her to express every four hours so she never got the chance to just be with her baby or, you know, rest after giving birth. Resulting in my sister ending up bottle feeding. She was too scared to discharge herself because of their snotty attitude to the antidepressants so ended up imprisoned in that awful place - Chesterfield Royal Infirmary - for a week.

midwives def better than drs, though IMO - 2nd time round my stitches were so much better from a dedicated midwife - 1st time round the dr was rushing and didn't do such a good job

Oh, I know, edam. I don't want to sound too defensive And of course I do appreciate that this is a thread for offloading. No one should have to suffer poor care, nastiness, ignorance. Every woman should leave hospital feeling that, at the very least, she was well cared for, no matter what the actual outcome/passage of events.

I could try and write a justificatory post but I'm too knackered. But what I will say is that it's a fucking hard job and until you've done it you can't possibly understand the stresses it brings.

A bit like motherhood, really

After scanning some of this thread I wanted to post just to say that the midwives I had were fantastic. I have nothing but the highest praise for the care I received both during the birth of my child and afterwards.

I have been very happy with the midwives that were with me during labour and birth. they were brilliant.
However those I met during the pregnancy were absolutely dreadful. They seemed not to care one bit, they were not listening and they had no understanding for someone's worries and insecurities being the first pregnacy - I wish I knew about mumsnet then, it would have been so much more helpful!!

and don't let me started on Health Visitors!! I hate them! What are they there for? the ones I met seemed to love their job as much as someone who stucks shelves in tesco. maybe I was just unlucky though. I apologise in advance to those who love their job and do it properly.

Oh Snaf... please don't take this thread personally.

I work with lots of midwives (in my doula capacity) and I've had 4 birthing experiences. There are many good midwives out there (and I'm sure that you are one of them). Whenever I talk to my clients and they talk about midwives and how they are perceived etc I tell them about the good midwives that I have met... and believe me I have met many.

All you need is one bad midwife during the birthing experience and it is completely spoilt for you. It's a bit like the HV threads. I've met a fair few of those as well. One of my own HVs was and is a total grrrrrrrrrrr case as far as I'm concerned and yet I have a good friend who is a HV who I would recommend to everyone. It doesn't mean that all HVs are bad... just that I've had some bad experiences with some.

Recently one of my clients had a midwife that I could have gone to prison for she was so awful, fortunately there were others who were more than worth their weight in gold. I don't let that bad experience colour the other experiences I've had.

You keep up the fantastic work that you do. There is such a shortage and the last thing the profession needs is to lose the good 'uns!