That actually made me cry.
I'm just going to paste a bit of my birth story as its easier
27 weeks pg. That evening the contractions started again in earnest every 4 minutes or so and painful all through the night. By very early morning I had a painful ache low down and as I had been warned by the consultant to say as soon as anything like that happened as I could have it without being fully dilated I went to find the midwife.
She asked if everything was alright as she walked past to which I said no and that I had a very low pain. She threw up her arms and walked off saying what can I do about it. I burst into tears and feeling spaced from tiredness and pain and scared I wandered out of the ward and stood in the corridor looking out of the window and crying not knowing what to do. So I decided to call DH even though I knew he shouldn?t be there according to their rules I needed him and wanted him to be there in time if anything did happen as it was a fair drive. So I rang him as soon as I got back to the ward and it helped calm me down.
Then the bitch woman from hell midwife came back and tried to explain that she was on her own and had other women to see to. So I just said I know etc to appease her and tried to explain that I was worried because I had been told to get immediate attention if I felt low pain and severe contractions. Anyway she called the on call doctor. Annoyingly the contractions eased while he was in with me coming at every ten minutes or so instead so he said he would wait and tell the consultant when she did the ward rounds a couple of hours later. So the midwife put me on the monitor and DH arrived. He was immediately told off as he shouldn?t have been there and but we just ignored her and spent the next ten minutes watching babies heartrate drop every time I contracted.
The midwife then came back in and we said we were worried because of the monitor trace to which she snapped ?you shouldn?t look at things you don?t understand ?and turned the monitor away from us and walked off to come back a couple of minutes later look at the trace and tell us she was going to call the delivery suite. It was only a few minutes before we were collecting up my stuff and I was being wheeled there.
It turns out I was fully dilated and baby was in extreme distress. A crash section later our baby was fighting for her life mainly due to her birth being later than was necessary.
I truly believe we wouldn't have been told our baby had 5% chance of survival if there had been more midwives on duty and I had had the care that was needed. I wrote the story when I was angry so called her bitch but really I know that she was at the end of her tether and there should have been more MWs working. There was only herself and a trainee looking after the whole ward which was full to bursting.
Lucky for us our daughter survived but I believe that this was down to her own fighting spirit and the amazing care of the peadiatric team who worked on her in those first hours. I can imagine that there are babies dying all the time to that lack of midwives.
Sorry its so long as you can tell its something that really bothers me and if you got this far well done