Post-natal ward without your baby?

[mummaintraining19]

Whilst I was in NICU where my DD was born early, they asked us how we found our experience on the Post-natal ward.

I was just curious what everyone’s experiences were.

Personally... My DD was in NICU for 7 weeks (I’m CPAP for the first few weeks) and I was in post-natal ward for a week. I cried everyday as I was surrounded by other mothers and their babies. I even had a lady from ‘bounty’ come and ask me where my baby was.

@pigoons I’m so sorry about what happened! Was that on NICU?! They had a strong can’t tell you information about your baby unless other parents were wearing headphones (didn’t always make sense to me because how do they know you’re definitely playing music).

I also found that a lot of things to do with my DD was kept from me! She had suspected sepsis twice when she was first born (10 weeks early due to pre-eclampsia) and no one told me until I read her discharge notes! I then confronted my NICU community nurse!

The feelings you had never leave you no matter how long ago it was!

I’m the same as some other pp, there is a lot we didn’t find out about our DS’s care and condition until 5 months later when we were invited back for a debrief with a consultant.

Also same with complete lack of postnatal care. I had an EMCS under GA because I had sepsis and acidosis. The day after the section I was in high dependency with a 1-1 nurse. After that I was placed in the ward but in a side room and it felt like no one bothered checking me at all. I was still seriously ill and struggling to recover. Getting told off for not being back in time for my lunch (I didn’t care about their shitty sandwich, my baby was in NICU!).

Our local hospital has an awful reputation and now I understand why. It seemed if you didn’t have a straight forward no hassle birth then they just couldn’t be bothered with you.

Thats awful Villanelle. What would it take for whoever dishes out food to pop to NICU/SCBU with food for mums round there. It was only that another mum in SCBU told me about the parents room that dh was able to bring me meals to keep in the fridge there and actually eat food - I'm coeliac, and on post natal you had to know (but no one told you) to order any special meals 3 hours before every meal. Else there was nothing anyway.
Going to SCBU meant going down the long ward, out through the doors into the main corridor, and then standing there outside SCBU until someone came to open the door. At a time I felt incredibly vunerable, bleeding heavily, lightheaded from bloodloss and worrying about my baby, it all felt so unecessary.

They put the temp too high in my baby’s incubator and I tried to tell then that because she was distressed and crying. Eventually they realised they had and brought the temperature down but because her temperature was up they said they had to take precautions and gave her a lumbar puncture - that was horrific for me to hear my baby screaming. It was their mistake. I still hate them for that.

@CinnnemonBeauty - oh my goodness!! How awful! These are the people you trust with your babies life & to make mistakes like that could be so awful! I mean completely understand that people make mistakes but you even pointed it out!

I had one nurse in NICU who was wearing pink (not sure what that means) who wrapped the oxygen tracking monitor around my daughters foot and had put it on so tight that her toes had gone blue. She had done it whilst we weren’t there and came back two hours later when my OH pointed it out! I was not happy! But nothing on the scale of yours!!

I hope your DD was okay after that. You are a strong mumma!!

Thanks @mummaintraining19 I have more horrific stories as I had one NICU baby and one SCBU. For my second baby I told the nurses to call me in the night if she was hungry - they didn’t the next morning I went down with my milk and got told off that she had been screaming in the night - she had awful puffy eyes and was sobbing. They said I should have been there with her during the night - but I had almost passed out and then got taken back into theatre the night before with a dural leak and needed a blood patch in theatre I had still managed to pump. Honestly even the dural leak was the anaesthetist fault. It’s a well known risk of an epidural.

Sometimes I don’t know how we all got home ok and alive. I have a number of doctors in the family and they were very helpful to us - when I was in hospital to help us navigate treatment etc. Such a tough time.

So many sad stories here! We were relatively comfortable and I had my own room in both the hospitals we were in. Not sure how much was due to my complex case and how much was luck and space. There were mistakes made due to being on a post natal ward as I had had major surgery at the same time as the c-section so should have maybe been post-op, but they wanted to help with expressing etc. Was very grateful I wasn’t in with other mums and babies, that must have been terrible.

The worst bit was the distance to NICU, which I couldn’t do without a wheelchair for days, but I understand they need to have the babies near the surgery wards so it couldn’t be helped. They did have a video monitor for the baby but it kept breaking and was more stress than it’s worth.

Spent the first night after my DS was born on the postnatal ward with other women and babies but without my own son. It really upset me. The following day I was moved to a side room and eventually a few days into our stay a midwife mentioned that it was justvso busy when my DS was born that they had no side rooms free and had to put on the ward. I wish someone had validated my feelings that first night. I cried and cried and cried. It still haunts me now nearly four years on! Sorry to hear something similar happened to you.