Which professionals did you most value in your experience of pregnancy and childbirth?

[Aral]

Hello everyone!

I am feeling like a bit of an intruder on here! I am not a mother myself, I am a student who is trying to figure out what career I want to go into when I finish my degree and one of the things I am really interested in doing is anything that involves providing advice (health related, practical advice, mental health) particularly for mothers, mums to be, loss mums and young children.

However, I am yet to figure out exactly what I want to do. My question for you all is who was there during your experience of pregnancy as well as before and after who was helpful or meaningful to your experience in a professional capacity? Just trying to expand my ideas and who better to ask than those who are experienced! I am thinking along the lines of jobs like lactation consultancy and not the more commonly thought of roles like midwives and health workers.

Thank you in advance!

Obstetric physio absolutely saved me from hip agony, and post birth helped me to salvage my pelvic floor - I'm 5"0 and had an 8lb3 baby, but can now do star jumps happily!

If it's more about advice, one of my friends trained as a social worker and now does a lot with young mums, she loves it vs her previous roles as you can make such a difference that will stay with families over a long time.

One of the community midwives.

Any of the NHS midwives I encountered.

They were all very different - the ones in the MLU were like a friend’s mum, very chill but caring. When I got transferred to the hospital, the MW who eventually delivered DD was very curt and scolded me a few times during labour, but you know what, she coached me through the birth and both DD and I were none the worse for it.

The healthcare assistants in the post natal ward were excellent as well- truly caring women who were obviously very stretched but never let it show when taking to patients.

Community midwives were useless for us (before and after baby was born) however every single member of hospital staff we encountered was brilliant! We had a premie so we met lots of people during our stay- midwives on antenatal were great, same on delivery suite, the peaditrician who came to see us before baby was born and took us to see NICU, all the nurses and our baby’s consultant on NICU and then the nursery nurses, midwives and consultant on the ward... they were all brilliant!

Hi OP, I’m a student children’s nurse. I was inspired to get into this after asking myself that very question.

My son was very ill when he was small (5 months onwards) and the nurses were absolutely amazing. They inspired me to go in that direction, which I am now doing.

They have, by far been the best professionals that I’ve incountered aside from the consultants who diagnosed him who are as equally as awesome.

My community midwife before birth was useless (so much so that she was forced to take early retirement about a week after I gave birth) but I will say the labour ward midwives were amazing, we got stuck on there for 2 days after DD was born (infection and the only beds they had on postnatal was wards so they didn’t want me mixing in case is got worse) they made us feel really special and actually listened to me when I had issues and whatnot. The other stand out person was the consultant - he was a junior doctor and he took all of my anger and was absolutely amazing in my delivery! The only staff on the postnatal ward I liked was a student midwife, she had only just got on rotation to postnatal and you could tell it was a career she was destined for, she was absolutely brilliant!

I say this on here a lot, but my health visitor really did save my life when I was suicidal with untreated PND when DD was nine months old. She was the only person in the world I could tell how I was feeling and I will never forget the day she dropped everything she was doing to come and rescue me and DD and take me to hospital to be seen by the community mental health team. She had been supporting me for months before it happened. I burst into tears when she told me she was leaving the service to be a SAHM just as I found out I was expecting baby no 2. I am so grateful to have had her.

We had a lovely health visitor too. She was so warm and open, she made me feel comfortable even sharing the smallest concerns and always made time for us .

Hypnobirthing teacher (did the Hollie de Cruz course) and almost every midwife I encountered. They are fantastic humans.

My community midwife was amazing on my first 3 babies. In fact we now work together and I call her a good friend. Some of the hospital midwives I didn’t find so caring but the very experienced midwife who did my episiotomy and stitches afterwards was first class.
The breastfeeding counsellor I saw on number 1 and 3 was a true angel sent from heaven 😊. After weeks of different midwives trying but failing to help me get a good latch, this bf counsellor got baby on perfectly within minutes. She’s actually been awarded an OBE and it’s thouroghly deserved. I’ll always remember her, how relieved I felt, how much she helped me.