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Childbirth

Share experiences and get support around labour, birth and recovery.

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Original poster

Did you know your midwife when you gave birth? Did it matter to you whether you did or not?

100 replies

Snaf · 26/05/2008 12:44

Just out of interest... oh, okay, will 'fess up - I am writing an essay on continuity of care and just thought I'd ask. I know it's not scientific so won't be using this as evidence, promise

But I am interested to know:

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies?
if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience'
if you didn't, would you have liked to?
did you not give a toss either way?

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

diddl · 08/01/2010 08:31

I did for the first as I went into labour unexpectedly at home & the midwife I had been seeing at my GPs surgery came round & delivered!

For 2nd I went to hospital, necer seen either before, frankly didn´t care as they were great.

raindroprhyme · 08/01/2010 09:54

DS1 - yes, i had all my antenatal classes with her and she was fab.
DS2 - no for the one who looked after me on the nightshift tho i hardly saw her anyway. yes i knew the midwife who delivered DS2 tho, but personally not through my antenatal care. i was terrified at that point as really needed to push and no one responeded to buzzer for 20 mins as it was shift change/handover. So was really greatful to see a familar face.

RockBird · 08/01/2010 10:02

No, didn't know her from Adam.

Didn't like her though, she was totally disinterested most of the time, left the room a lot. I was told that it was one patient one mw and they weren't short staffed so not rushing off to anyone else which I would have understood. When she was in the room she sat at her desk with her back to me all of the time and didn't speak. When I asked for an epidural she wouldn't give it to me and kept forcing the G&A back into my mouth and more or less told me to stop whinging (I wasn't, I was actually almost silent for the whole four hours).

It was so bad actually that, at the end, DD was whisked away for about 15 minutes straight after birth with no explanation. Another mw was called in and she looked like my aunt, so much so that I really latched onto her.

They wrapped DD in a towel when they eventually gave her back. I pulled the towel back slightly to just have a look at her and the horrible mw went ballistic, yelled at me to put that back immediately as I was not to leave her naked.

Actually, it was a really crap experience from start to finish, thinking about it. Sorry, bit of a rant there...

lucykate · 08/01/2010 10:05

didn't know any of the midwives i had, never met them before turing up at hospital in labour. didn't take to the first midwife i had with dd, luckily her shift finished and the lady that took over was lovely. ds was delivered by a student, and again, she was lovely too.

EldonAve · 08/01/2010 10:12

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies?

if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience'

possibly

if you didn't, would you have liked to?

did you not give a toss either way?

Not really, what I wanted was a MW with me - with DC1 I was without one for the first 8 hours

chaosisawayoflife · 08/01/2010 10:13

I did and it meant a huge amount to me. I had planned for a home birth and was disappointed when I phoned the delivery suite to arrange for a midwife to come out to me and my midwife answered the phone. Although she is a community midwife she was doing one of her 2 weeks a year on the ward so wouldn't be able to come out to me. At the time I was a little disappointed but not overly so as I knew the chances of her being on duty for home births when I went into labour were slim anyway. I had a midwife come out to me who was fine, but labour was very prolonged and she went off shift and was replaced with another after 8 hours. After another 6 hours or so the midwife wanted to transfer me to hospital which I was very distressed about but knew it was the right thing to do. I went into hospital, had monitoring, syntocinon and epidural, basically everything I didn't want for my labour. I laboured for another whole shift and just before handover I was about 9cms, so knew things were getting close. The midwife went out to get someone to take over, and came back in with my lovely community midwife. By that point I was exhausted (32 hours so far), disillusioned, fed up and distressed, and seeing this lady meant so much to me. It was great to have someone there who knew me, understood all my feelings about being in hospital, knew my hubby and was able to reassure him, and just generally made everything ok again! She went on to deliver my baby, visited my several times on the ward afterwards (I was there 4 days) and did most of my post-natal visits. All of the other midwives that looked after me were caring, considerate and professional, but having the one that I knew, and knew me, so well actually deliver my baby meant so much to me, and I believe she helped me to come to terms with things not going 'my way' much easier than I would have done otherwise.
Sorry for the essay but hope it's useful.

LadyOfTheFlowers · 08/01/2010 10:16

I have had 3 in hospital so far. 4th will be born there too in April.

Knew MW for 2nd as she arranged to come to hosp whenever I was in labour to be with me as I had a shit time the first time trying to actually get admitted. (was sent home at 6cms because I wanted DH to stay with me. )

Didn't make any diff to me though really. It was nice to have a familiar face but don't think it made any diff to how I coped with it.

flossie64 · 08/01/2010 10:16

I didnt know the midwife when I had my DD, but my Dh did! It turned out she was an ex girlfriend. This makes a good anecdote when talking about my birth experience.
That aside she did look after me very well and I also had a community midwife come on shift in the hospital, who I knew well.

MrsSantosloves2010 · 08/01/2010 10:17

Did know her for second baby - had been community midwife for both pregnancies.

Having her at the birth as lead midwife increased my confidence. It was a homebirth so it helped taht I knew she was very pro-homebirth. She did everything she could to let me direct things, using torches and getting in to weird positions for examinations so that I didn't have to move or put the main lights on - she did it all despite a bad back and without my asking. She is a total hero

I was in hospital first time round. Cannot remember mw's name and it scarcely matters as there were about 25 people in the room at the end because some students were invited to observe too(no one asked me if that was OK

So yes, it made a huge difference to my confidence levels.

Pineapplechunks · 08/01/2010 10:17

Yes, there were two of them(a shift change) and I'd met both before. They were from the team of community midwives from my GP practice.

Difficult to say whether it enhanced the experience compared to having a midwife whom I hadn't met before as I have no comparison but it was reassuring to know they were aware of any problems I had had during my PG. However all of that would have been in my notes. It was nice they knew my name straight away and I knew theirs, a small thing, I suppose, but nice all the same.

What I did notice was that some of the hospital midwives were a bit dismissive of me because I had come with my own midwives. After the baby was born and I was on the ward and there were a couple of issues I needed resolved and I was told by hospital midives that I would have to wait until my midwives arrived and to ask them. There wasn't much continuity there.

GetOrfMoiLand · 08/01/2010 10:17

No, hadn't met the midwife before and no, couldn't have cared.

I actually had loads of different midwives as induced. Had one put pessaries in me and hook me up to the heart monitor. Another different one took if off when I went to the loo (and looked at me funny when I said I didn't want to be hooked up to it as I wanted to walk about etc). A different one again to break my waters.

Then is was all go as i went into full labour once my waters were broken, with dd being born an hour after that. Had yet a different midwife, with an assistant. They were both older ladies, no nonsense and lovely, and the birth itself was a lovely experience, the preamble being staffed by many different midwives didn't matter a jot to me. The midwife who delivered dd was there all afterwards and walked with me to the ward afterwards and squeezed my hand in a lovely way when she said goodbye (welling up now). So all was really nice.

Ward midwives were bitches from hell, however.

MrsCrawf · 08/01/2010 10:39

I was in labour for ages and started at home but ended up in hospital. I had about eight midwives altogether through shift changes, etc, and knew none of them, but I found they were all very knowledgeable and caring and knew their job really well and that was all that mattered. Some of the home birth MWs even came from different areas and one came to our flat about a week later to check on how we were purely by her own choice which was lovely. So, no, it didn't matter one bit that I didn't know them beforehand, which is kind of ironic as that was one of my reasons for choosing a homebirth!

yangymac · 08/01/2010 12:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

tinierclanger · 08/01/2010 12:26

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies?

No - and I think we went through 3 (at least) as it was a looonggg labour

if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience'

N/A

if you didn't, would you have liked to?

thought I would have wanted to before going into labour, but in the process, really didn't care. But that was partly because they were all lovely.

did you not give a toss either way?

see above!

Strix · 08/01/2010 12:40

I did not know the midwife. It did not bother me. FWIW, I ended up in a crash section and I didn't know any of doctors either.

Ivykaty44 · 08/01/2010 12:43

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies?

if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience'

N/A

if you didn't, would you have liked to?

No although dd2 the midwife was a student midwife, stayed with me all the way through, had 5 dc herself so had given birth a few times, I got on well with her,

did you not give a toss either way?

havoc · 08/01/2010 12:57

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies? - no, first time around, I met her 10 mins before I gave birth as I was wheeled into the delivery room. For my second birth, I met the MW 20 mins before, when she started her shift.

if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience' - n/a

if you didn't, would you have liked to? mmm, I don't know. I was a bit disappointed the first time around. It wasn't as personal as I was led to expect from anti-natal classes. I didn't know her name until the day after, when she talked me through the birth. The second time, I was just keen to get out of there.

Takver · 08/01/2010 13:00

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies?

Yes - home birth with two midwives - knew one as a personal friend, the other was her partner & I had met a few times

if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience'

Yes - it was fantastic, I had total trust in her, tbh if I hadn't know her I wouldn't have considered a home birth, but as it was it was a great experience, despite having to transfer to hospital after the birth.

MrsJohnDeere · 08/01/2010 13:16

Didn't know them, hadn't seen them before, didn't give a toss. Both were really lovely though.

Did see the same community m/w all through being pg with ds2 (most days after 20 weeks - was a difficult pregnancy, much monitoring), and that did matter to me. She was lovely too.

BabyBecks · 08/01/2010 13:30

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

watercress · 08/01/2010 13:35

I didn't know any of the midwives during my labour and though I didn't really care whether I did, it would have been nice to not been experiencing quite such a rotating door of staff (I think I had 10 in total - some for a few hours, others for just an hour or so).

pointofnoreturn · 08/01/2010 13:51

Did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies? No

if you didn't, would you have liked to? Perhaps
did you not give a toss either way? Probably

mellifluouscauliflower · 08/01/2010 14:05

No. And to be honest, it was least of my worries at the time!

TheOldestCat · 08/01/2010 14:11

did you know the midwife who delivered your baby/babies?

Yes, she was the student midwife who had done my booking-in appointment. I was the first woman she'd both booked in and been at the birth with.

if you did, do you think it 'enhanced' your 'experience'

Yes I think so (though DD was my first so nothing to compare it to at the time). She stayed for five hours after her shift ended to help DD arrive, although the 'main' midwife changed halfway through my labour.

She was utterly lovely and wrote to me afterwards. I will never forget her!

neolara · 09/01/2010 12:02

I didn't know the midwives who delivered my first two babies. It didn't really matter.

What would have been helpful at dc1's birth would have been to have seen any midwife at any point in the first two hours we were in hospital, especially as by the time one finally arrived I was fully dilated and ready to push. Was the first crap thing of a string a really crap things.

My dh delivered dc3 as it was a very quick labour. (Midwife and ambulance arrived a few mins later.) It makes that birth particularly special. In retrospect and because nothing went wrong, it definitely enhanced the experience.

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