ANY NORTH-WEST WOMEN, Do NOT have your babies at Wythenshawe Hospital.......

[LittleBeth53]

Oh Wythenshawe Hospital. Where to start? The website promises state of the art birthing suites, luxerious pools, have any of your family members come & go as they please, recover in a private room if you request. They promise all the same on the tour.

So I chose to have my first baby in Wythenshawe Hospital and for the rest of my life I will regret it.

I was put in a room with none of the things they promise, but an old bed with no pillows, no blanket & a canteen chair for my boyfriend to sit in.

I was rushed through for an emergency C-section ofter 3 hours of mild labour pains; nobody would actually specify what the emergency was!

I was guaranteed a private room. I was put in a 'poorly baby' room with 5 other women crammed in there. Each room was only meant to accomodate 3 women & their babies. Me & my baby were fine, my son was an angel throughout our stay but the babies in the room with us were in need of specialist care & neither me nor my son had any sleep in 72 hours for the combined force of 5 babies joint screaming.

As I had a section I needed a catheter (tube they put inside your urethra that your wee goes down,) it was wrongly placed twice & therefore the bed I was in was soiled twice.

The catheter was ripped out 3 different times by orderlies sent to change my bedding ONE HOUR after my surgery, when I couldnt walk.

Nobody came to administer to my pain relief the whole time I was there. I had to ask each & every time. I couldnt walk due to the numbing medicine from the section & each time I needed some help I was treated as a chore.

I needed help changing my maternity pads in the night due to the numb legs, I had to buzz 8 TIMES for somebody to come & help me.

Eventually I leaked, soaking my bed in blood. They sent an ORDERLY who spoke no english, NOT a midwife, to help clean me up & change my pads.

The orderly again ripped out my catheter & when she went to get a midwife to put it back in, the midwife wore a look of disgust, grimacing through putting it back in for me. Each time the tube had to be placed back in, it was agony.

I was only allowed 2 visitors other than my partner for two one hour periods throughout the whole day. There were no visitor toilets & my mother was refused entry into the patient toilets. They told her if she needed the toilet she had to spend 15 minutes of her visiting time walking to & from the visitors toilets in the entire opposite wing to the hospital.

When I think back to the birth of my first baby I dont remember the elation, the joy, the new baby smell, visitors bringing gifts (visitors were asked NOT to bring gifts.)

The memory I'll always carry with me is being held up by 2 midwives & my mother as I couldnt move my legs, naked & sobbing with enormous clots of blood & urine pouring down my legs while orderlies changed my bed for the 4th time due to bed leakages from poor care. All in my first day of recovery.

In the end I discharged my baby and myself and refused to wait for them to all clear me.

We're currently seeking legal action against this hospital for gross neglect.

Please do not go to Wythenshawe Hospital. I wouldnt wish my experience on anybody.

Much love. xxxx

I do appreciate some people had positive birth experiences but I started this thread to share mine and warn people of my particular experiences in that specific hospital.

A couple of the posts seem to be "There there, is it really all that bad? Really? Not think you're over re-acting a bit there?"

I am absolutely not over-reacting and being made to feel stupid over the most insignificant thing I have mentioned; the toilet situation is beginning to make me lose faith in this website.

Most people are helpful, kind and post positive, supportive responses. But just because a few poeple cannot imagine that a hospital would allow such poor treatment does not mean it didn't happen or that I'm over elaborating.

The chair people of this hospital are currently trying to offer some kind of hush settlement but I refuse to let the same thing I went through happen to any other women in the north west area.

If you've read my story then thank you so much for doing so and I hope all your births and future births are wonderful, joyful experiences.

littlebeth get on to the patient liaison service (PALS) at the hospital, they will help you to complain. I did when had a bad induction / ecs experience and felt much better knowing I hadn't just put up with it. Was really easy, all by email too and I got a written apology plus an assurance of change of practice. Going to the papers is probably a bit more time consuming, depends on the response to your complaint I suppose.

Do complain about the midwife with the attitude. I didn't because it would be my word against hers, but regretted it subsequently because at least they might have kept an eye on her.

It must have all been a terrible shock - I know i was very frightened (and exhausted) at the time and later wished I'd been more assertive, so buttonmoon your comments are true, but probably not the right time for littlebeth.

Too late for me OP! Done it twice, and both times it was fine. Don't panic people. Sorry for your experience, but still. Don't be a scare monger.

The woman in the next bed to me when I was there kept in touch & she is currently seeking legal advice too for the exact same reasons.

Her baby was having difficulty latching to her breast & instead of sending a lactation nurse to help her, they took her baby away in the night while she was asleep & formula fed her son against her wishes.

When the next morning came & they gingerly informed her of what they'd done, it was like world war 3 had broken out in our room.

I'm not still in shock, it was 4 months ago now & I get so much happiness and joy from my son everyday, what I'm left with from my experience is a sense of disgust & indignation.

My son was the one good thing that came from that experience but just because they delivered a baby doesn't give them the right to treat people the way they did.

Acanthus I'm so glad your birth experiences were lovely. Every woman's should be.

I am sorry you had such a bad time

if you are seeking legal action, you need to delete this thread I think

secondly, you should start by complaining via pals

do you really wnat/need the stress and expense of a legal action - you have to prove neglect and a quantifiable loss..related to that.

you had sub standard care, but based on what you've written, i am not sure a legal case could stand or would be worthwhile, but complain strongly and immediately to the matron, PCT chair etc .. speak to PALS who can assist you

BTW, after an emergency section , teh correct protocol is for someone to see the mother as soon as possible after delviery to explain and ensure she understand why she had a section

I had my baby there. Sorry you had such a horrible experience.

I think they are still sorting out the wards etc as there was still building work etc ongoing when I was there.

I found the ante-natal wards horrible and dirty, the room where I gave birth poorly equipped and I was put on an ante-natal ward for babies in transitional care instead of a private room BUT the care from the staff was great so I can't complain too much. You rightly have a right to complain but not sure on what legal grounds you could complain.

They do have brand new birthing suites but I couldn't use them. I think they are moving in the right direction though this doesn't negate what you went through.

I'm sorry you had what sounds like a very bad experience. It does indeed sound dreadful.

But a few points in your OP do sound reasonable. Visiting is limited to 2 visitors per patient for one hour at two set 1-hour periods per day: I think this is usual for every hospital.

Not being able to use the ward toilets again sounds usual, due to reasons mentioned above re infection control etc. I recall my visitors having to walk back to the main entrance toilets which was about a 5 minute walk.

My partner also had a straight-backed uncomfy chair, and I had no pillow (got someone to bring me one in). We accepted this and got on with it - the NHS is overstretched and they are trying their best.
Leave the above points out of your letter, they are not the main issue here. Also, I wouldn't use the word 'orderly' (a bit 1950s), healthcare assistant is fine.

The issues around why you had to have a emergency section should have been fully explained at the time, but if they weren't, you are entitled to a consultant appointment to go through your notes.

I understand how angry you must feel at being robbed of the experience you were hoping for, but as someone above said, don't sscaremonger.

I'm truly sorry if my comments came across as patronising. They were not intended to be so.

Firstly, I do have experience of how poor maternity services can be.

DD1 (13.5) still has a scar on her head from the fetal monitoring probe which was attached may times before DH pointed out to the midwife that the machine was not plugged in meaning that the lack of reading was less to do with fetal distress and more to do with incompetence.

With DD2 I was pressured into having pethidine and an epidural which I definitely did not want and had stated as much in my notes.

With DS I was promised an epidural when I asked 5.5 hours before he was born. I had dreadful SPD and a back to back labour so it was excruciating. The epidural never arrived. Once he was born, a student midwife weighed him, got it wrong and so when we were readmitted to hospital 2 days later we were subject to all sorts of worry and stress as he had 'lost' over 7oz in 2 days.

None of this is important here as it's Beth's thread not mine but obviously some of you feel it necessary to question my motives.

In all three cases I wasted too much time wishing none of this had happened instead of focusing on my new baby. It was totally pointless and I wish someone had told me to chill out.

Earwicga - my point is that Beth should never have been rolling about on a sheet. She (or her birth partner) should have said 'no, not now, come back later'. To physically manhandle someone against their wishes is assault as far as I'm aware.

sh77 If you're the kind of person who assumes every well meant and supportive comment is patronising then I think I'm quite glad to be on a different planet.

I still think you should take this as far as you can littlebeth. Especially if the hospital is trying to hush you up - I doubt they would do that if you had no case! Although the advice on here regarding relevance does make sense.

I didn't complain about my crap, demeaning and frankly dangerous care and I regret it, especially now I'm doing it all again (thankfully many miles away). But this isn't about me, so I won't drag all that up in detail! I worry now for the women who are 'cared for' by the midwife I had, and wish I had spoken up so something might have been done about it.

there are a couple of things that might be legally actionable.. i am not sure if an auxiliary is ok to remove a catheter.. it might be that they have had the training, so that is ok. other than that, am not really seeing a legal case here.. as i said before , you have to prove neglience and a quantifiable loss.. other than that, there has been poor care, that is for sure, but is it something oyu can sue for? I don't think so

the OP needs to start with a high level complaint by talking to PALS and taking it from there

4 months is really no time at all though. i was still having flashbacks up until about a year ago when i finally had counselling (dd2 (3rd dc) is 7 yo now.

if you feel ready - check out the NICE guidelines and compare them to the standard of the care you received. that way you can be reasonably sure which of your areas of concern may fall into categories for reasonable complaint.

it's about the right point to ask for a debrief on yur birth anyway, particularly if you feel the standard of care was below par. the debrief may give you some of the answers you feel you need without resorting to formal complaint. if not, it will probably crystallise which aspects you feel need to be formalised.

LittleBeth53, I was so sorry to read your story...and to find that things have not improved at Wythenshawe since I had my DS1 7 years ago
I, too, had my baby whipped away in the night to be formula fed, like the lady you were next to in the ward. I woke at 5am to find that he was missing and I had no idea where they had taken him or why. The fact that his first full feed was formula meant that I was not any longer helped to breast feed. They just told me it was too late for breast feeding now, and to carry on with formula. Luckily, I'm not one to be told what to do, so I carried on expressing and eventually managed to successfully BF at about 3 weeks. After that we threw away the formula and carried on BF until he self weaned at about 15m
During labour, the midwife kept asking me where I intended to give birth every time I changed position. In the end, I asked her why the fuck she needed to know, as I had no idea-was just trying to get comfortable- and she said if I was going to give birth on the floor she'd change out of her uniform and into theatre greens as she didn't want to get her uniform dirty from the floor !
At one point, I knelt on the floor and tried to lean on the bed. The bed suddenly collapsed and took off across the floor on its wheels, leaving me sprawled on the floor in the middle of the contraction . The midwife said she'd 'forgotten' the bed was broken. and got my DH to help her ram it up against the wall, so that she could then only access me from one side if I went on the bed, and there was no room for the machines.
On the ward, I'd paid (50 quid a night!) for a private room, but every time a staff member came past the door, they would open it, giving me no privacy at all. My bed was not changed in the 3 nights I was there, despite blood leaking onto the sheets. The place was filthy and I, too, discharged myself before they wanted me to go home (at which point the witch midwife sent everyone out of the room saying she needed to give me a 'checkup', then proceded to call me a 'very silly girl' for dicharging myself, and that if my (jaundiced) baby got any worse he'd have to come back onto the children's ward 'and they won't let you have a nice comfy bed there you know, you'll have to leave your precious little baby all on his own, and you won't like that, will you?'
I was utterly traumatised by the whole thing, and wish I'd had the strength to complain at the time.
Good luck to you, Little Beth, you certainly are not alone in this experience, and you aren't the only one who wil have made these sorts of complaints, I'm sure.
Congratulations on your darling baby. For what it's worth, I went on to have 2 more, and those births were wonderful (had moved away from Manchester by then though!).
X

LittleBeth53 - I'm sorry you had such a shit time. I had a shit time with my first child too. Have you considered requesting your notes and going through them with a midwife. It might help you put some of the anger to bed - I'm not saying it's not justified, but it's not helpful to you.
Just going through line by line what happened and saying 'well my experience was.....why did that happen', made things a lot clearer.

For example, one of the questions I would be asking in your case was 'why were you still in bed three days after a caesarian, why hadn't pain management been set up so you were mobile to aid healing?'

Incidentally, second child, born by CS (because I was sick with PET again) was a much better experience and partly because I had developed a stroppy gene during the intervening years

You can get over and past this you know. It may not seem like it at the minute but you will. That's not discounting anything you went through or how it felt, but you will feel better eventually, however you go about getting there. Please consider talking through your notes though, it can be really helpful :)

And congratulations on your baby. :)

amistillsexy they did that to me too! The morning that I discharged myself the paediatrician came to see my son & said he was a perfect healthy little boy, good reflexes, working joints & not even a spot of jaundice.

But when I went to discharge myself the midwife said, "well your baby is jaundice & if you discharge yourself, I guarantee you'll be back here with him for a series of light baths & you won't be able to stay with him, you'll have to leave your newborn all on his own."

Silly moo. My community midwife (who I cannot say more wonderful things about, an absolute star throughout all my pre-birth care) came to see me the day after I discharged myself & said the peadiatrician was right, not a spot of yellow on him. That must be the 'go to' line they use to scare disgruntled patients into not walking out.

I'm also not trying to "scare monger" anybody. I am not saying, "if you go to this hospital, you WILL be treated like shit, my experiences WILL happen to you." A few women I've heard from, on here & in the world, have had nice experiences there. But I've heard from more who haven't. I'm simply sharing my story. If that scares people I apologize but I don't regret sharing it.

Thank you for sharing this. Just looking at the number of births vs the number of beds I have questions about both Wythenshawe and Macclesfield. It looks like they have enough bed to deal with 'the average' but not the peaks.

DH was offered a promotion which involves a move to Manchester. We had them put it off but it looks to be back on now. When I heard I cried out of fear because everytime I have received NHS care it has been an awful experience. While American healthcare isn't cheap you get what you pay for. So far my obn group has been fantastic and my frequent appointments have allowed me to build a relationship with each of the doctors who could be attending when I deliver (there are 4 obns in my group). None of my friends who have had children here have horror stories but are very happy with the care they and their child received. I wish there was a choice of delivering at a private hospital in the North West. I would certainly pay for it.

The NHS has good & bad points. My pre-birth care with NHS midwives was lovely, my community midwife in particular was brilliant, I sing her praises.

From my own experiences of Wythenshawe & from others I've heard, I wouldn't be going back there.

I've heard of a few ladies saying that they had baby's at St. Mary's in Manchester & although the area it's situated in is off-putting, it was nice there, clean, comfortable & friendly staff.

I guess the only way to GUARANTEE a birth to remember that is completely catered to your wants & needs is to go private. But like you say, there are a lack of private hospitals in the North West.

Thanks for the tip. I will take a look at St Marys.

I'm registered at St Mary's & my care has been excellent so far, apart from one clanger of a student midwife at my first appt at 9 weeks.

All the hospitals there (children's, Eye, MRI) have had complete renovations & are lovely, new & clean. I haven't toured the labour ward yet but I am expecting good things.

PS Very sorry you had such a shit time OP. My friend gave birth there a year ago & was very happy. It sounds like you were caught up in a capacity/quality of care situation & I would definitely complain to PALS. If they are offering hush money then they must know something was wrong. Given the NHS' financial straits I'm not sure I would pursue a cash settlement, (not sure if you are?) but I would want a proper apology & proof that things were changed as a result.

It is the shouty title in particular that makes me think you are scaring people unnecessarily - many who don't read the thread will still see the title.

Acanthus - butt out! You have no idea what you are talking about. I wouldn't wish a bad birthing environment on you, and it is very good that people speak out when they experience terrible things. You are being very unfair on the OP.

ButtonMoon - I definately said no. You think the staff cared about being charged with assault? I don't think so. I don't think they cared about anything.

I am so sorry that you went through such a bad experience.

I had my twins at Wythenshawe Hospital in 2003 by elec. c-section and had a wonderful experience.

It sounds like things have dramatically gone downhill there. I have several friends who have had their babies at the hospital since 2004 and many of them had a bad experience. I know that one of my friends did put a complaint in about the disgusting treatment she received, I won't go into the details but I was completely shocked and upset by her experience.

Acanthus - yep, many people will see the title of the thread and can then make an informed decision whether to read it or not.

Thank God for people like the OP who refuse to accept this treatment as just part and parcel/an unfortunate side effect of giving birth. Hospitals would prefer us to just go home and 'forget about it'. Wouldn't it be hugely convenient if they could just treat us any way they wished and there would be no comeback or challenge to this.

Putting aside the trauma of delivery for a moment, I find the idea that in the 21st century in British hospitals we can have people being this traumatised by their CARE following birth just disgraceful. That the OP's abiding memory of her child's birth is being hoiked about a bed by orderlies with blood and urine running down her legs is appalling. Her issues with catheter and cannula management and care are in the realms of negligence. But according to you, the OP shouldn't post for fear of scaring people off the hospital or freaking them out?

What a load of crap, frankly. We need people to post, we need people to challenge the system. We also need to 'allow' people to recover and heal following difficult and traumatic births. Telling people to shut it away in a box and just get on with things in no way enables or aids that process.

Littlebeth thank you for your post. I too hhad a traumatic birth (in a different hospital) and I would suggest contacting your patient liaison services as part of the formal complaint process. You can also ask for copies of your notes if you don't have them already. I would also write EVERYTHING down that happened to you during and after the birth, listing every complaint you have, however small and insignificant it might feel. Not only is this very cathartic but it's incredibly useful in giving a full picture for future discussions with the hospital. Also ask your husband to add to it or write his own version. At no point will the hospital be able to challenge your version as the imaginings of a tired and overemotional new mother if your husband is corroborating your information (my hospital notes were full of crap about how I was breastfeeding my babies after birth and had full midwife support and yet I had no recollection of this at all and instead recall having to plead with the midwives for four days to help me express my milk, etc. My husband confirmed that we received no help during this time in spite of what was written in my hospital notes).

Above all, thanks for posting this. This sort of information can help the next mother at that hospital go in with managed expectations and perhaps anticipate areas of her care that might fall short. I also hope yyou get the support and resolution you need.

Congratulations on your baby.