I’m 29 weeks pregnant with my second and I’m thinking about opting out or declining the HV service past the 6 week weight check. I’m happy to have the 1 year and 2 year development reviews, it’s just the weight clinics. Does anyone know if you can actually do this? My reason for not wanting to go, isn’t bashing health visitors as a whole (I know there are good and bad in every profession, although I do think in health care you can’t have ‘bad eggs’) but it is based on the abysmal advice and service I had with my first.
I think of my local area there are just one or 2 HVs that provide advice in line with NHS guidelines, the rest of what we’ve been told is utter nonsense and ultimately caused a lot of stress unnecessarily so I’d rather avoid if possible.
Reasons below:
My actually HV is ok, but incredibly lazy. Refused to help support breastfeeding and said I was only allowed 3 chances to get it right and then I had to move to formula (made no sense at the time either). She’s also given advice that directly contradicts the nhs, ie around water to babies under 6 months and snacks under 12 months.
My daughter was a low birth weight but classed as constitutionally small, birth notes explain this, but at every weight check we we berated about her size, until 6 months she tracked consistently between 2nd and 9th centile and then after 6 months between 9/25th. She’s stayed in this place til 2, it’s clearly where she is meant to be. We’ve been told she’s too small still but they refused to write referrals to a paediatrician for further investigation rather insisted she needed to be force fed. I was told social services would be called if I carried on breast feeding (under a year she was having solids too), that she’s too pale and that’s a sign her diet is lacking, (it’s not her blood work is fine which they had a recent print out for, they are also saying this as she mixed race as she doesn’t have a sickly complexion but she is fair). There are more comments such as these but these are the ones off the top of my head. Basically weight clinics were nightmare, always saw a different HV and this sort of issue was constantly brought up with an undertone of accusations of neglect and each of the issues they raised they refused to refer. We paid private so get her seen by a paediatrician who we now see 6 monthly on the nhs as hes aware of the issues the HVs raised , was disgusted and wanted his notes on her medical records, he also monitors her growth. We paid for a paediatric dietitian who evaluated her eating and said she’s fine and developmentally normal, both of these consultants were aghast at the comments made and how there was no clinical basis. It was attributed to not understanding child growth and poor breastfeeding training. We bought a proper calibrated baby scale during lockdown when weigh in clinics stopped so I will monitor dc2s weight gain. I’ve a great relationship with the infant feeding team and know they’ll support in the case of breastfeeding issues and likewise my daughters paed is fantastic so would pay private to go to him and he’d refer back to nhs.
In summary my reasons for not wanting the HV weight checks is just to avoid the headache. But equally I don’t want them calling social services as that would be a headache too.
Anyone else opted half out like I’m considering? Again I’m happy for the checks up to 6 weeks and then the 1 year and 2 year development check, but in the interim it’s been a complete 0 value add. Tbh even the development checks we do with the paed but I’m happy to do them with the Hv too xxx