Feel terrified and disempowered by NHS

[jezza1234]

Hi all,
Really need to vent. Just had a 25 week appointment with yet another midwife who is about 10 minutes out of training, has no idea how to do the simplest thing and has no idea who I am or anything about me. I am terrified of giving birth in that hospital (Whittington in London) - there is no continuity of care, no personalisation, not even any continuity of information given out! I feel like i’m on a conveyor belt that no-one has any control over. Would rather blow £15K on private birth than deal with the stress and anxiety of the NHS.

Yes, I was under 'consultant led care' due to previous loss, not to do with current pregnancy.

It involved a long traipse to the hospital, a couple of hours waiting in a crowded, over-heated waiting area and seeing someone different every time.

I found this massively stressful. I needed to stay with 'consultant led care' as I wanted to be induced at term (and no, hearing different registrars with different opinions on this wasn't helpful) but the community midwife service in my local GPs would have been much better.

OP. the Whittington has a very good reputation and I know lots of people who have had very good experiences there. I imagine that it's beyond stressful at the moment.

Only you know what you can tolerate and what you can afford, but it's probably worth looking into private midwives and/or doulas now.

Prior to COVID, targets were set for a certain percentage of women to have continuity of carer throughout the intrapartum period, with little regard to how this would actually work. There are very few caseloading teams who offer true continuity. There are community midwives who’ve attended very few births in years and vice versa. The home birth teams generally offer continuity but they have much smaller caseloads. Many midwives have children themselves, would struggle with on call systems etc. And most trusts will find ways round out (eg. Having a named team rather than a named midwife, having one of the team make contact with you during the birth rather than actually attending etc)

And of course now thanks to COVID the workforce is significantly diminished and I have no clue what will happen to the continuity plans.

The NHS saved my sons life, no question. But despite close monitoring and regular scans, due to administrative errors mainly, they missed massive red flags on my scans and it’s pure luck and a cautious midwife that meant I presented to the assessment unit when I did.

Most people cannot afford private maternity care though.