So I’m 31 weeks pregnant with my first and my midwife and GP surgery is causing me a lot of stress. I’ve had a number of issues trying to get hold of her and never get a call or text back but then whenever I try to call the community midwife centre they do not answer the phone and don’t have a voicemail so I can’t even leave a message. I’ve got a backlog of hundreds of attempted calls to them on my phone. I’ve been under one health board since I was a baby with no issues at all but the past year have had to change due to moving and it’s been nothing but an absolute nightmare. I had to tell my GP surgery 10 times that I was pregnant from week 5 and got to week 13 without even having a midwife because they’re so useless!!! Bearing in mind each time I told them that I’d had an ectopic pregnancy a few months beforehand and was advised to have a early scan to make sure it doesn’t happen again on my next pregnancy, that didn’t happen though because nobody could point me in the direction of where I had to organise it! I’ve called my GP surgery about having my whooping cough and flu vaccines and they’ve told me no three times about the flu vaccine because I’m not over 65 yet I’m pretty certain it’s common knowledge that pregnant women are supposed to have flu vaccines! They’re rude, they hang up on you and don’t call you back when they promise you they will.
So today I had an appointment at 11am with my midwife and planned to speak to her about the flu vaccine issue as I still haven’t been able to get it. I got to my appointment and sat in the waiting room for 30 minutes, the one other lady in the waiting room was then called in so I just assumed she was running a bit behind. Other lady leaves at 11:40 and another woman comes into the waiting room at that time. 5 minutes went by and the lady assisting the midwife came out and called a name similar to mine, so I’d asked her if she meant mine as my appointment should’ve been at 11am and she told me she was going to go check and would be back. Instead of coming back into the waiting room, the assistant then stood outside of the waiting room and waved the other woman to go with her and it was in fact her name she had called. The assistant didn’t say a word to me and this other woman had only been in the waiting room 5 minutes so I know the midwife couldn’t have been behind. I got up to go ask a receptionist what was going on but she had wondered off somewhere and due to a health condition with my legs that requires surgery I can’t have yet I can’t stand around for too long at the moment. By this point there’s nobody around, I was hot, uncomfortable and really upset and it was an hour since I was supposed to be seen. I sent my midwife a very long text message and asked her to call me today when she was available and I left crying my eyes out. I called the GP surgery to ask if I can speak to someone about my midwife but she just gave me my midwifes phone number!
I don’t know what to do about this. It’s giving me serious anxiety as this is my first pregnancy and I don’t feel I can rely on the “healthcare professionals” around me. I’ve never had a bad thing to say about the NHS, my DH and my Father have worked for them for years, but these people are completely useless. Any suggestions?