Child birth at Whittington Hospital

[Freno]

Hi local mums, just after some advice/reviews of anyone who's given birth at the Whittington in the last year? I'm mostly concerned with postnatal care (this will be my second child and we'll be having an elective c).

postnatal care mostly grim unless you get Sister Comfort who is the most awesome lovely postnatal midwife ever! (oh and pauline Okumeno (totally remembering that surname wrong) and irene boateng)

Baby was on NICU- they were mostly amazing there.

Had to do one formal complaint about a night midwife- complete bitch from HELL who I had to shout at to leave and she wouldnt (and gave me bad breastfeeding advice and told me I was PND etc- she nearly got sacked as a result but then the next night Pauline and Lorna (dont know surname) were brilliant with me and munchkin.

To be fair to them they are very over stretched but they did help when asked- the healthcare assistants were lovely and would get tea and toast and help with swaddling etc.

It was a completely grim experience but actually given I have just sung high praises of several of the staff maybe it wasnt so bad after all!

oh and I was in 8 days so got a pretty good idea of it all! If you can get your own room much better. (my community midwife had to kick off on my behalf when I was roomed in cearns ward with a mum and baby (shared room) when my baby was in NICU (was too upsetting for me- would have been ok if my dd was with me too)- they found me my own room after- it was also the induction ward so hearing all the women in pain while i was getting over my horribly traumatic labour and v.ill dd wasnt fun. I was then moved to Murray Ward when I was roomed in with DD- the shower area had no heating (should be fixed by now) so was absolutely baltic in there.

Thanks for the advice Thandeka. I had no idea about amenity beds - just done some research & good to know options :)

I got mine free though- wasn't paying £700 for the privilege (£100 a night!).

I can echo some of what Thandeka has said - postnatal ward really, really overstreched.

It's pretty much survival of the fittest.

So if you are there and have your partner and you both kick a fuss about eveything you need which is not provided you will be ok-ish. (for example doctors told us that ds needed test in the neonatal ward so we kept asking reception if doctors called to say we should come because we did not trust them to remember to tell us in time. When they had called we then went round and asked every midwife we could find if they could take us to neonatal ward as we were not allowed to go on our own. In the end I got a cleaner or trainee or someone to come with us because no midwife was available...)

...you get the picture and it's like this for pretty much everything else ...some midwives are really, really great but they are overstreched so it's really not their fault.

Just brace yourself, go on an assertiveness course before delivery and try and avoid the weekends, particularly sundays

I was in the birthing centre - lovely room and we were able to stay there for almost a full day after the birth. Very little in the way of postnatal care, partly cos it was a Saturday - but didn't matter too much as it was child number 2.