Getting copies of your notes from pregnancy, labour and birth

[Linnet]

I finally got round to phoning the hospital to see how I would go about getting copies of my pregnancy,birth and labour first time around. today I got a letter from the hospital and an application form to fill in.

Basically what I have to do is fill in the form, send it back with a cheque for £10 and then they make an appointment for me to go in and look at the records with a Dr and if I want any copies they will do them at a charge of £5 for 1-50 copies, £20 for 51-150 copies and £40 for 151+.

Has anyone else done this?
Since I plan on being pregnant by the end of the year, hoping all goes well of course, should I pay to see my records or when I'm pregnant can my midwife get copies of them for free to go over with her?

Basically I want to know exactly what went on last time during labour and birth since it's all a bit of a haze and I want to try and not have the same experience next time if possible.

Can anyone out there advise? Mears or Leese have you had this experience with any of your patients? Do they keep notes of any previous pregnancies with the notes of new pregnancies?

Sorry this is so long and thanks for any advice

I haven't been through this but I know that The Data Protection Act 1998 says that businesses may charge a reasonable fee for copies of any information they hold about you.

You don't have to take up their offer to go through your notes with a doctor - just say you want a copy at the moment. Perhaps if you think it would be useful you could ask to go through them with someone later but I can't see any reason why you couldn't go through them with a midwife rather than a doctor if that was your preference.

The maximum fee they can charge is £50 which would explain why they have broken it down as they have.

I have a copy of my notes which cost me about £40 from Chelsea and Westminster. It was an interesting read. No real conflict between what was written and what I remember but it was interesting to see that I obviously lost all concept of time and things that I thought had happened about 6am didn't actually happen until about 4 hours later!

I had same responce when I enquired. I was lucky/unlucky enough to be in hosp before No.2 was born and able to go through my notes with a midwife for free. A copy would have been nice though.
By the way the reason for going through it would be to translate the medical terminology for you!

I demanded a copy of my notes from my hospital after having a terrible terrible labor/c-section with ds. They never asked me for any money, but it took them 6 months or so to get it together to get them copied. I had to complain officially about the delay before I finally got them. As it turned out, the most useful part for my second pregnancy/birth was the notes taken during labor which was only 5 or 6 pages. The majority of the folder was info. from my pregnancy which was completely normal so there was nothing that anyone would have needed to see. I had my dd at a different hospital and they were not given the notes from the birth of my ds (never mind the hospitals are 20 min. apart). So I'm glad that I did have the notes and I did show them to several midwives/doctors along the way with my dd as I was trying to have (and succeeded in having) a VBAC.
Basically, I personally would recommend getting your notes and getting them early.

Women who have concerns about forthcoming labour either before or during subsequent pregnancy can come and speak to the senior midwife in the labour ward to discuss their previous care in my experience. It could also be done with the community midwife or consultant. If you book at the same hospital then the notes are all kept together. I always look at previous labour notes when women are admitted next time.

When was the last time you received treatment from that hospital?? if it's within the last 40 days then you can get your notes free of charge..(I think) check out the NCT website there is more info on there
I have just received mine and dd's notes from pre-natal-labour-birth-special care-discharge as I'm in the same situation(actually ttc) and wanted to be able to pass on my previous history(we have moved house).
Be prepared for interesting reading and things you might not have known-No-one told me my dd was blue at birth and needeed re-sus big style.....explains a little to why she has Cerebral Palsy
Good luck

Linnet - I had to do this with both my daughter (in SCBU for 3 weeks)and my notes as I had a lot going on last pregnancy. It has just cost me £50 but it will save a lot of problems when I next am pregnant.

I do not have to go and see anyone they are just sending the records via certified mail.

I had all my notes until I was discharged (?) by the HV so it was easy for dh to photocopy them before handing them over - we've since moved area and I've still been able to give the midwife/consultant copies for this pg.

Worth bearing in mind for your next one.

When I phoned Ealing Hospital to ask for a copy of my notes, they told me to get my midwife to request them. I asked why, and they actually told me that they will process "an official request on headed notepaper" much quicker than one that comes from the mere patient.

Thank you all for your comments. I knew I would have to pay for the notes (seeing as it's been nearly 6 years)and I don't mind doing that, so long as it's not to much. I hardly think that there will be more than 151 pages, at least I hope not. I'm going to phone and see if they can tell me how many pages there are. I'll probably get them and have a look myself then when I'm pregnant get a midwife to go over them with me if there is anything major that I want to ask about.

Nobby it's funny that you mention having the notes photocopied before handing them back. I do remember that there were notes left at our house and every morning when the midwife came to see me she would write in them and at the end took them away. Did I look at them or read through them while they were sat in my house for 10 days? No! and I can't think why I didn't, that is so unlike me, lol A friend of mine has recently mentioned that she read hers and found out how many stitches she had and then wished that she hadn't looked, lol

I really only want to know about the labour and birth as I lost all concept of time. I'd like to know if they wrote down when they discovered that dd was in the Op position and how many hours it was before they actually mentioned it to me, I think it was quite a few hours.

thanks again ladies I'll keep you posted

Just to let you all know I contacted the hospital and they sent me out a form to fill in to request my notes. I stated on the form that I would like to know , if possible, how many pages there were so I would know in advance the cost.

I got a message last week and when I phoned back the lady told me that without the pages on blood work it would cost £5 and with the blood work it would be £20. I said I'd take the notes without the bloodwork, seeing as I wouldn't understand them anyway and I know that nothing was mentioned about bloodwork at the time so I'm not worried about that.

I should have my notes by the end of July and I'm looking forward to reading them. So including my £10 asking fee it's only going to cost me £15 in total.

Thanks for all your comments in the past and hopefully I'll find out what I wanted to know.

Linnet, I got mine this week from 5.5 years ago - at no charge, so that was nice - but what was nicer was reading them and realising it was all a lot shorter than I remember. I hope yours are similarly enlightening, even if they just help you work out what you want to change for next time. I'd recommend getting them, really would.

on that theme www when I read through mine I realised how many times they tried to get me to have pain killers and how many times they came to do observations and I was in SCBU visiting my daughter.

Well, my notes duly arrived this morning by recorded delivery. Interesting reading, for the bits that I can read anyway. Most of it is fine, but some it seems to ahve been written in a very light ink which hasn't copied to well at all.

Basically it seems that everything was going fine up until a certain point. 1st stage was just over 18 hours, 2nd stage was nearly 2 hrs and the last stage was just minutes as dd was delivered in theatre.

I'm a bit confused about the positon though. Sorry to keep asking questions but I know you are all so knowledgable out there. first reference is cephalic(sp?) presentation L.O.A. Then it says later still posterior. Later is says OT position. And later still it says L.O.P position. does this mean that she started off ok then moved into the op position?

There were lots of references to early/late deceleration then back to baseline. Can anyone enlighten me on this mears or leese maybe? Does this mean that my dd's heart rate was dropping or something else entirely? It has comments like keep an eye on and inform dr's of any more problems.

The main points I discovered were that I managed to get to 9cm's within 14 hours and then the whole thing stopped. The Dr examined me and then ordered a synctocin drip I don't remember anyone asking my permission for that but the writing there is quite faint so maybe I did give consent and I just can't read it.

All in all well worth getting and I was amazed at how long I lasted before I asked for an epidural, makes me proud I must be stronger than I thought, lol

Hi Linnet - a few answers fro you. Cephalic presentatin means head first. LOA means Lfet Occipito Anterion which means that the back of the baby's skull (occiput) is facing the front left hand side of your pelvis. This is a good position. It can actually be very difficult to define the position a baby is lying in. At vaginal examination you feel for the fontanelles (soft spots) on the baby's skull and the lines (sutures) that join them. The midwife/doctor may be unsure and will writr down what they think it is at that time. The next examination it may feel differently, therefore they might write a different position. It does not mean necessarily that the baby has moved but that they can feel it better. Alternatively the baby could have started in a fairly good position but took the long rotation round to the ideal position. An example is starting off as ROA and rotating all the way round through ROT ( right occipito transverse - lying across the way with the back of the head facing the right hand side of the pelvis, straight across) then ROP ( right occipito posterior) to LOP, to LOT then to LOA. The short rotataion would be from ROA to LOA.
Hope I haven't lost you so far. The referenece to posterior could mean the cervix rather than the head. A cervix starts off posterior usually during labour ( lying far back in the vagina) and becomes anterior ( nearer the front) as labour progresses.
The refernce to early/late is a classifiaction of decelerations of the fetal heart in relation to the contractions. Decelerations are very common and to be truthful no-one knows entirely what they all mean. Some tracings have very marked decelerations on them which can be a sign of fetal distress. However, there babies are often born screaming and are not distressed at all. The whole picture has to be taken into consideration such as the baseline ( the rate the heartrate sit mainly at) and the variablity ( how much the heartrate fluctuates).
A syntocinon drip is often advisable when an epidural has been given for pain relief because the contractions are often less effective. It is usually worth a try to tyr and achieve a normal delivery.
It would be much better if you could go over your notes with someone such as a senior midwife in the labour ward or the consultant so that you could have the events explained to you.
Hope my post has helped a bit though.

Thank you Mears for answering my questions. Dd obviously moved round and got stuck as she ended up in the OP position which was why it all took so long and ended up in theatre.

When I'm pregnant, hoping everything goes well, I hope to go over the notes with my midwife then which should make things a bit clearer. Maybe next time things will go a bit more smoothly and less traumatically for me.

Thanks once again