Changing midwifes

[AlwaysBelieve19]

Hey ladies I really want to change my midwife do you guys know how to go about this please

I just feel like as a midwife she's not very helpful she's a bit unorganised she doesn't reply to my concerns she reads my messages but don't reply she doesn't check up on me or ask if I'm doing ok

Are you under NHS? I don’t see or contact my midwife out with my appointments so don’t really understand why your midwife would be contacting you to check up on you? I know some areas have a direct number to their midwife for any questions so if that’s the case with you she should be answering you back but she likely has a caseload of hundreds of woman & may find that unless it’s an urgent question it can be left to be discussed at your appointments?

I have no idea what my midwife's contact number is, I have the number for triage to call if I have any problems and also the community midwifes number. This is my first pregnancy but I believe it's normal to only speak during appointments in low risk pregnancies

What are your concerns OP? If they aren’t urgent, she likely doesn’t have very much time to address them. How many weeks pregnant are you? Your midwife doesn’t need to be your best friend, just competent and pleasant.

I have a caseload of over 150 women at various stages of pregnancy. Thankfully my Trust doesn’t think they need a direct telephone number for me and they are able to leave a message for someone in the team to get back to them (usually within 24 hours) or telephone triage for urgent concerns.

I don't think any will message just to check up on you, it's pretty normal to only see/speak to them at your appointments. Do you have a number to call for your concerns? I've had to ring once this pregnancy, I just rang the number for the community midwives base, spoke to a midwife and she left a note for my named midwife to say I'd rang too. I would ring the midwives and discuss your concerns, hopefully they can reassure you or allocate you another midwife - however I wouldn't expect any of them to regularly contact you as standard outside of your planned appointments, they have a lot of women to look after

In the nicest possible way, I think you might be expecting too much from your midwife. The only contact I had with mine was at appointments and messaging was only for urgent problems that couldn’t wait.

It isn’t part of their job to “check up on you” and she probably doesn’t have a lot of time to answer multiple messages.

You are expecting far too much from the midwife I’m afraid. They don’t have the time to check in on women.

I echo what everyone has said, midwives carry a massive workload and also are on call and have to work in the hospital as well as the community. You might text them when they’ve been on nights are off / on shifts so they just don’t have the time to reply.

Realistically if you have concerns it’s not your midwife you contact it’s triage.

I was massively surprised my midwife text me the day I’d had DD to say congrats as I know how busy they are. That was the only
Phone contact I ever had with her

You're going to need to bring those expectations waaaay down. To, like, Earth.

@AlwaysBelieve19

I just feel like as a midwife she's not very helpful she's a bit unorganised she doesn't reply to my concerns she reads my messages but don't reply she doesn't check up on me or ask if I'm doing ok

Because they are understaffed and overworked. They aren't there to check in with you to see if you are ok - that's just not how it works plus at the moment all the covid restrictions means everything has to be done over the phone

I'm high risk and pregnant with twins and have barely any contact with my MW

I'm not sure you can even ask to change as it's usually only a couple of MW who cover one area and it's whoever is on call