A i right to insist DP staying with me against hospital rules?

[tiggz]

My dp and mum are goin to be my birthing partners but at the hospital im giving birth in, the policy is they can stay with me throughout the childbirth, but if my baby isnt born within the visiting hours of 12-8pm, my DP may have to leave me as its not visiting hours and i will be alone, right after having the baby, they say its because they like to give the mum plenty of rest, but if my DP isnt there with me i will only be unsettled, i'l get more rest just knowing he's beside me, not only that, i just want him there and why would he want to leave me and his newborn?
I dont want to be the anoying patient but do you think id be right to insist on him staying there. i dont want to be alone!

pastagirl if they need a room regardless of what is in your birth plan you will get moved out as it would be awful for someone to have to labour in a corridor so someone could have a bit of special time wouldn't it.

if this issue was so important, rather than presuming it woould be fine for your DP to stay, it might have been worth claryifying eralier in your pregnancy so you had time to adjust?

I had my ds at 11.30am and was back at home by 2.30pm. Would have been sooner but we waited 1/2 hr for my dd to show up with my mum :D

I didn't leave the delivery room - apart from a trip to the shower - so you can be in and out very quickly and there won't be an issue at all.

"it dosent mean i have to agree or want the rules!"

Another fine example of Me Me Me Me Me, fuck everyone else as long as I get what I want.

What job do you do Tiggz?

I'm gobsmacked by your assessment of nhs workers in your area as "lazy" and "can't be bothered".

Just wondering what kind of workplace you are used to and what you are comparing them to?.

Lulumaam that made me laugh. I remember (TMI alert!)when I still worked in acute care, rushing in from work, running up the stairs and barely making it to the loo in time for a wee. I then sat there wondering
-why the rush
-why was so much wee coming out?

Then I remembered leaving for work 14 HOURS EARLIER needing a wee. And during my shift I had not had a chance to go to the loo. I bet I'm not the only one either.

Yes, I frequently go a shift without having a wee. Get recurrent UTIs as a result.

Would love to hear what OP does for a job?

Anyway, I'm off now for a lazy shift, sitting around drinking cups of tea and ignoring the buzzers.

yes, there's never a good time to have a wee is there, in that environment !!!

14 hours holding it in is pretty good

never mind cahterising patients, and laboruing mums, i think it would be good for the care givers too

It's not laziness! It's a desperate need for more staff, more beds, more facilities!

The hospital where I gave birth, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, was almost brand new when DD1 was born via forceps (2003).

But within a couple of years, the shortage of beds became so obvious often enough mothers were sent via ambulance to give birth at hospitals in Tayside (Dundee) and Fife from Edinburgh!

Someone just decided to cut corners is what happened, not laziness.

This:
'We fairly frequently get visitors onto the ward who we know are know sex offenders or violent drug addicts.' from stripeyknickers is so true!

You walk round the ward and can just tell.

In the room where I had DS, one bay was used for women being induced. The consultants would come in to the curtained alcove and ask the patient all these questions.

The responses would blow your mind and you couldn't help overhearing!

The midwives and consultants would leave and you'd overhear the patient telling her partner to get out and hurry up and score her more junk before they started syntocin or another lot of gel, what have you.

I was going to the toilet and could hear the partner tying off and hitting the patient. I knew because I used to go out with a heroin addict and she said, 'Do you think you can hit without tying off?'

Yeah, I really want a guy like that a curtain away from me!

OP did say she was 8 days overdue. I think it was wrong to say NHS staff are lazy but... she's 8 days overdue and will probably be cringing about having said that in a post-labour-more-sane moment (sorry OP have been there though).

But there is never "nothing to do". There is always something that needs doing, but sometimes I have to prioritise my own need for a cup of tea above someone elses need. Fot the sake of my health/not fainting. And to be honest a discharge would come down quite low on my list of priorities.

I never said you weren't allowed your own opinion. You say you're stating your opinion - isn't that just what I'm doing?

tiggs, you've had a lot of support , some tough talking and a lot of explanation for why things are the way they are

there is ab solutely no need to be so abusive

but you have made some rather unthinking comments re the NHS

as i said lower down teh thread, if this was so important you should have clarified this before you were 8 days overdue and woul dhave had more time to get to grips with it, rather than getting angry now

if something is very important , you need to take the responsibility on your own shoulders to find out about it

and you can still push for a homebirth, it's not too late

Tiggz - sorry but I think you are being totally unreasonable. Why do you want your DP to be there? What is frightening you about being alone? What do you think your DP could do for you?

Would you be happy for the woman in the next bed's husband to be wandering about when you're discussing pain relief/trying to establish breastfeeding etc

TO be honest I was a bit relieved when DP left, gave me a chance to have some time alone with my baby and get some sleeo!

Also - working for the NHS I don't appreciate your generalisation about NHS being lazy. My neice is a midwife, and there are only 3 of them on for a ward of 15 antenatal women - they are certainly not lazy

And I'm not "filling your post up with stuff which isn't relevent" Everything I've posted has been directly related to something you've posted.

Have a good shift stripey

The visiting hours aren't an issue on the labour ward where you have your own room, but would be an issue on the ante-natal ward (if you are induced) or on the post natal ward. You can't insist unless perhaps you have a private room as you'd be in a ward with other women.

You can push to be discharged direct from the labour ward.

DS was born at 00:06 and as they were not that busy and were happy for me to be discharged directly from labour ward and they said DH could stay .....

At the MLU unit I am going to this time there are double beds so partners can stay - however I suspect there is a limit on how long and if I need to stay longer than a few hours after birth I'd have to go to the post natal ward and then he'd have to leave at the end of visiting time.

If its such a big deal then you have to go to a private hospital...

[has just realised that this thread isn't in AIBU]

btw - make sure you mention to the MWs on the ward how lazy you think they are when they're having a cup if tea.

Your experiences is limited.. I've been on this earth twice as long as you, and in my experience the VAST majority of medical staff in the NHS are NOT lazy.

My MW stayed with me on the ward for 5 hours straight while I was on the delivery ward, didn't leave my side once. I reckon this is pretty standard.

And regarding your original question - no, you cannot insist on DP staying. I understand that it's an anxious time, but you just can't expect this to happen if you're in overnight. Imagine how vulnerable you would feel if you were on the ward with your 6 hour old baby and somebody elses partner is sleeping in the next bed. Ridiculous.

lal123 its just what id prefer. im 18 have really bad anxiety im quite lonely alot of the time and im verry attached to my dp. its just in an ideal world what i would like. i know rules are there for a reason but i dont agree with them all.

lulu im not being abusive, just anoyed me that she had said i was selfish, cuz i dont agree with all rules. if i wasnt aware that all hospitals have different rules how am i suposed to know to research t, as far as i was aware i knew the rules.

stripeyknickersspottysocks maybe in ur hospital where you work there isnt, but in that paticular experience of mine there was lots of free staff and beds, and it really wasnt busy and nobody was doin any paperwork, yes i know a dishcharge sheet isnt a high priority but when theres nothing else to do thats the only things that needs doin then its needs to be done in my opinion.

mumnww i wish i had the privelage of having funds for a private hospital

oh, and make sure that when you're on the ward, to call the midwives 'nurses' this will help your case further.

Just to wish the OP all the best, and agree that while the rule is understandable, hospitals really should make it clear much earlier in pregnancy that when you are moved to the post-natal ward, your DP will only be allowed to come with you if it's visiting hours. No-one mentioned this in any of my antenatal appts or on the hospital tour!

In my case I needed a terp and had two friends plus DH for the purpose - the female friend did the first night on pn ward as they might have had to kick me out of the single room, but DH was there the second night.

Letting women rest in peace, I get. But I have to admit I don't understand the logic about dignity - it's ok for men to be around a ward from 10am-6pm, when the women are just as likely to need the toilet/be in a nightie/be catheterised etc as at night! And most of the doc visits are done during the day, too, so all those conversations about your genitalia will be going on with men around.

Tiggz - also wanted to say about discharge - you can just leave you know its not a prison.... with my DD they said after the delivery because she was distressed had to stay in for 24 hours... she was born at 1pm. So the next morning (and yes DH had to leave at 10pm but he was happy to as he was so tired, he hadn't sleep the night before) I started to push for discharge at around 11am. I was checked, DD was checked... but by 1pm no sign of discharge - they'd lost my notes!!!!

So I told person in charge that if no discharge by 1.30pm we were leaving, and we did. She said she understood why. I left my mobile and said if they wanted me to come back to get discharged I would but not until after 6pm when it was easy to park. And yes we popped back that night (without DD).

notcitrus, I was labouring (loudly) next to a strange man. I felt vulnerable, embarassed and VERY uncomfortable. AN/PN ward no place for a man full stop imho.

You are so lucky to have the NHS! OMG!

I come from a place where I had to go bankrupt because I was made redundant, my boyfriend's car that I was driving got hit by a drunk driver, and I couldn't afford to pay for the medican treatment I needed.

It was awful.

I got on with it, too.

It wasn't nice, but again, the problem as I always saw it is that there needed to be more staff.

Lazy? What do you do for a living?

Because I worked as a legal secretary for 12 years and those midwives worked their asses off.

having spent a good deal of tiem within the NHS, at various committees , and on the maternity unit , i can pretty much say, there is v v v rarely nothign to do, even on teh odd occasion beds are empty or it looks like nothing needs doing.