Panorama has terrified me!

[oysterpots]

I'm not anywhere near any of the hospitals featured but the programme has just made me feel so like I won't be in control of what happens to me when I go into labour.

I know it's unlikely that anything bad will happen but is there anything we can do to make our own situations come with as little risk as possible?

Those poor people...

Watching the programme i realised how lucky i was in the care i received. I gave birth in a midwifery unit and could not have had a better experience. I had a midwife with me the whole time and two when my lo was born. The after care was fantastic and my husband got to stay the night as they had double beds. Watching the programme last night made me very glad that i have such a good midwife led unit near by that gives you such a good labour experience and one to one care both during labour and with the post natal care

I've watched the programme online now, and wish I hadn't. I didn't have a straightforward labour, and some of it left me with questions, BUT the midwives' attitude and presence of mind were excellent. I honestly don't think the care could have been better. One thing both the programme and my own experience has left me with, though, is that the fear of legal action can produce too much "choice" and not enough control on the part of the staff. In my case they accepted 2 requests of mine that were, looking back on it, ill-advised (to top up the epidural at the pushing stage and to delay the pushing stage because DH had popped out to ring into work.) The 2 requests contributed to a pretty messy end to the labour, and DD was born very distressed. I don't think a woman in labour with no medical training should be responsible for such decisions; if the outcome had been bad, I'd have been blamed- the notes said 'pushing stage delayed 15 mns because father walked out of the room'. Sorry, I've rambled here...

3mum isn't a midwife I don't think - she talks about "nurses" far too much . If you have a nurse rather than a midwife examining you in labour then you ought to be quite concerned.

Personally I don't have time to "chat at the nurses statation". If I'm talking at the midwives' station then its work related. I certainly wouldn't stay there while a buzzer was going.

Not really sure that the advice to send your birth partner off to find a midwife even if "that means opening a few doors" is very good. Most women who are in labour wouldn't be too chuffed if a strange bloke wondered in the room looking for a midwife.

If there were any signs of foetal distress that I picked up on then I would tell the woman straight away, not only that I would bleep for a doctor straight away.

There is no way that where I work a consultant or hospital manager would be bleeped because a woman was feeling ignored. Not even in office hours, never mind out of hours.

Stripeyknickersspottysocks -how did you feel about the programme? Do you think it was a realistic representation or just true of certain hospitals/ just showing the bad bits. I'm an ex paeds nurse and know that sometimes wards I worked on were verging on the dangerous or we couldn't give the care we would have liked to but really it was rare...there was always some way of getting more staff support and I don't think basic safety ever got missed but parents and patients might have felt ignored whilst we did the best we could in difficult circumstances.

Preggers - I completely get your drift and was ranting away along the same lines right through the programme. Mind you, it freaked the hell out of DH - the programme, not the rant. My overriding feeling when it was over was 'yep, home birth is definitely the way to go'. Not just because of the lack of care given to labouring women, but because I was so incensed at the constant reiteration that childbirth is dangerous and if you don't have continuous electronic fetal monitoring, your baby might die. Despite the fact that studies cannot prove that EFM improves outcomes to any discernable degree.

What if ALL hospital 'inmates' have assertive partners demanding decent care from understaffed, stressed, tired midwives?

Oh dear.............

3mum...there is no need for a midwife to check you every 15 minutes if labour is progressing well, and normally, and if you send a birth partner to knock on doors and disturb other labouring women, i think that is unfair..women need to labour in privacy, not have a stranger sticking their head round the door

midwives are understaffed on the whole, and have never know them to stand around chatting....maybe i am lucky

a good midwife, is hands off, on the whole, and will let your body guide you and let your body do the work

by all means , have a birth partner who can advocate for you , but not aggresively

If a strange bloke barged into a room that one of 'my' women was labouring in, he wouldn't know what had hit him, believe me.

And as for standing around at the 'nurses' station, chatting - chance would be a fine thing.

That programme really annoyed me. It was a Crimewatch of birthing....

Yes, you have seen all these terrible things, but don't have nightmares and do sleep well.

It is absolutely irresponsible to show that kind of thing on TV - all it does is scare the sh't out of people without saying how the problems could be solved.

Yeah, let's pretend none of this happens. Let's sweep it under the carpet and when women try to talk about their experiences, just tell them to shut up and stop scaring people
Much the best way, eh?

No, Aloha, not at all. It is just that if I was a first time mum sitting at home pregnant, I would be scared out of my mind.

The best thing to do is show both sides of the coin and talk about how many good births there are at these hospitals and the steps they have taken, or show an exemplary hospital / birthing centre and how good experiences can be.

Thing is, they made it sound like this was the norm and I think it did a lot of hospitals and midwives an injustice....just look at how many of us on here are saying we had good births.

I really dislike these scaremongerers that call themselves documentary makers....

Barnet has been rebuilt and obviously underestimated the amount of women it needs to cater for.

they shut the main barnet maternity hospital years ago and many mothers from round here used to go to edgware too.

it really isn't that big in there, when you think of the area it's meant to cover. some mums in with me were from south london.

it had to be shown imo.

FioFio, 1: 23 is not acceptable no doubt about it. But its only half the picture, how many of these are in labour / delivered / delivered x days ago etcetera. If out of the 23 most had delivered a few days ago is that as bad as if 10 were labouring?

Point is, they give you limited information and scare people because of it. What was the average for the month for example?

They need to show the good stuff to in order to give a balanced and realistic view.

Beckmo - from my personal limited experience (only worked in one hospital) it seems to have been a realistic representation of what it CAN be like. But not every shift is like that. Unfortunately many of them are and midwives seem to be running about very stressed most of the time.

I've heard other midwives make exactly the same comment about "a mother needs to die for anything to happen". Obviously no midwife wants a mother to die but people do think that this is the only thing that will get stuff changed. I've also seen very dangerous things happen with bad consequences due to lack of time by midwives.

BUT that sort of thing happens very rarely, though obviously shouldn't happen at all. The majority of the time the midwives may be stressed out but we do try and hide it as much as possible from the women.

I really do try my best and it breaks my heart when I'm looking after 2 women in early labour and a woman who's just delivered. I can't provide the support I want to. But I'm not standing about chatting. I'll go hours busting for a wee and not have time for the loo, an 8 hour shift with no cup of tea and no food. Etc, etc. All the time trying to do my best for the women and keep on top of the paperwork.

I am not asking it to be fluffy, I am just asking for a balanced picture. I came away thinking I had seen a very very one sided view of something, where they had sought out the worst possible stories (some of which were several years old) and had not told the full truth.

I thought higher of Panorama than this scaremongering they showed last night.

It would be utterly ridiculous to spend money on a serious current affairs documentary saying, ooh look a lovely baybee. What would be the point of that? YOu can see births 24/7 on baby channels if you want that.
This is about a SERIOUS health crisis, a NEWS story, a matter for real concern.
Yes, it might well scare people. But you don't suppress serious stories because some people might be scared. Nothing will change unless stuff like this is exposed. I was left totally alone in huge amounts of pain, left to wander corridors in the night, while the lazy, wicked midwives laughed and lazed about. I am delighted that documentary makers have gone undercover to show what goes on. Maybe it will help change things. Showing ickle babies being born in a nice fluffy way will change nothing.

BTW, I have been considering becoming a midwife....

I was induced in Dec 2005 due to suspected Small for Gestational Age baby.

I was repeatedly told that I was not in labour right up until I was told to push. I was refused vaginal examination because my waters had broken "and was not in labour".

I was continuously hooked up to CTG machine, but no-one checked the trace from 04.00 am till 07.30 am - infact when my husband told the midwives I needed a poo (several times) each time he was told to unplug me, and make sure I plugged myself back in afterward.

When I asked for a clean pad, I was told that my waters would continue to leak until birth, so there was no point. When I insisted, the midwife just pointed to a cupboard and said "they are in there".

When I said I was in significant pain, and couldn't cope, I was told i had "another 18 hours till you're in labour.."

Finally, my day shift midwife came on shift. (FAB midwife only qualified 1 year). Within 5 minutes, she had gone to get the Supervisor of Midwives to overule the shift leader regarding vaginal examination, and established that I was fully dilated.

I was given Gas & Air, and Supervisor of Midwives told me to start pushing. 45 minutes and a 2nd degree tear later, Millie was born. Supervisor of Midwives taught midwife how to stitch my tear (complicated 'v' shape so needed careful stitching).

The worrying thing was, that in order to fill in their paperwork, the midwife had to get the trace from when I was attached to CTG after waters broke, till birth, and go through them with me, asking for my recollection of what I felt like at each point, because they didn't know when my labour had started.

They assumed that because I wasn't having 'classic pattern' contractions, but rather contractions that rolled into one another, that I had simply been reacting to the Prostin pessary they had given me the previous afternoon to induce me.

Aloha; I understand you had a tough time.

I dont want fluffy lovely babies shown on TV, I agree there are plenty of programs on that. But if they had prefaced / or said after (dont know the word) the one about Barnet (for example, pick any) with 'Barnet currently has delivered x babies per month, with x complications, x midwives per shift on average, and x complaints' I would have felt a lot happier.

I know plenty of people who have had tough times and even more who have had good - I just want an informed view.

What do you think a woman about to give birth at any of those hospitals for the first time is thinking? Does she have an informed view?

Panorama's view is to inform, not provide a single sided biased and unfair view

It is not Panorama's remit to provide a 'balanced' view of all childbirth, it is the programme's remit to highlight a problem/scandal/issue. The issue is clear to everyone. Too few midwives, some awful, cruel midwives, women not being served properly by a service that we all pay for. That is the story, and if you don't think it is an important one, well, let's just say I disagree.
I complained in the strongest possible terms about my treatment - eventually, when I was strong enough. The midwives on the night shift were transferred to day times to be supervised and retrained. The rule about partners having to leave if the labour ward was full but the woman is kept on an ante-natal ward has been removed. That's thanks to ME pointing out what they did wrong. I still think there are probably screwing up people's lives on a daily basis, but I can't change everything singlehanded. You bet things will change because of this Panorama programme. Thank God.

One of the most horrible things about having a traumatic experience is the way people rush to trivialise it, IMO. Nobody wants to hear it. There is a very interesting thread on the special needs board atm with women with severely disabled children saying how people like to accuse them of playing the victim. This seems to me to be more of the same.