sorry bit of a thread about a thread, but changing the topic

[2shoes]

do you ever open a thread and wish you hadn't?
why do I need to bring it all back by even posting?
so please excuse me, but if I feel the urge, I will post here instead.

thread here

I cant read the threa, both my DDs pregnancies and births were mishandled and both nearly lost during labour But Im lucky they are here, fairly healthy and I refuse to take money away from an over stretched service.

oh I will
dd needs it

yes and thats understandable for you 2shoes, its a clear case for you and your DD. Mine wont/dont need the long term care your DD does.
How long you been fighting it for?

Good for you 2shoes - it's only when it starts hitting them financially that they (or their insurers) will sit up and take notice - unfortunate but true. Until then the risk of payouts for negligence are within 'acceptable' limits compared to the cost of providing adequate professional care (i.e. what happens when underfunding results in an 'over-stretched' service).

I wish more people would seek redress.

I think it must be a horrible thread for you to see GS. Especially as people are discussing it in the abstract with no idea of the emotions etc that go with the situation in reality. Can you block it?

there seems to be a thing with mn, that you can't talk badly about a midwife, seems a big bad thing to do.
but they are human and make mistakes, and ofetn when they do, they don't even know the long term affects

weird they seem quite happy with the GP and teacher bashing though
hope your ok 2shoes

Oh - you are so right.

I once criticised my GP on AIBU and received flak from all sides for doing so - cos in MN all GPs are 'God'.

Looks like they apply the same test to MWs.

But recently GPs have come in for a slating - so may be you are allowed to criticise them since they started earning Premiership salaries?

ok I have given in and hidden the thread.
IO think the sever lack of understanding of what is involved in a case, means that the thread is just a waste of time.

2shoes end if say if no one flags up when mistakes are made by professionals no one is going to learn from it and same mistakes will carry on happening

I suspect some of his are related to his birth harder to proove as his problems only became more obvious later. But requested labour records and if I can proove it I will dam well chase insurance to

I think you see a fair bit of midwife bashing tbh

though not as much as health visitor bashing and social worker bashing, of course

but then we have to be free to bash when needed

I'm sorry the other thread has raked up distressing memories 2shoes. As a (very former) lawyer who did a lot of defendant work (i.e. for insurers!), can I say that IMHO the sort of case you are looking at is exactly what the legal system is there for.

And as a (very former) lawyer for the children in these cases can I say that proving negligence is really hard as you have to prove they did something so awful that no even vaguely competent person would do - ie you have to prove a lot more than just a mistake.

Having worked with lawyers who pioneered these cases back in the 1980's I also know that they have transformed the care that mothers and babies get as doctors were not good at self regulating themselves and it took big payouts to make them change. Yes you can argue it has gone too far and caused defensive practice and over medicalisation but thats because people misunderstand the legal tests which mean to disprove negligence you really only need to reach a level of very basic competency not be midwife of the year. You do really have to go some to be found negligent by a court. And actually most of the cases aren't about individual mistakes but about systems failures or poor training or inadequate staffing (never give birth on a bank holiday) which are perfectly avoidable.

I have also seen many cases where the staff knew and wrote in the notes that they thought there might have been birth injuries but didn't tell the parents who of course suffered at home for a few years until they eventually came back and asked why their child wasn't walking and hadn't slept for more than an hour for 2 years and then found out their child had had CP all the time.

So stick with it 2shoes you can always come and rant at us

I can't even begin to understand how hard it must be to read these threads when you have been personally affected.

My first birth was totally mismanaged, the level of incompetence and lack of care throughout the whole ward - not just individual MWs - was shocking, and I consider myself and DS very lucky that we escaped that place with no lasting damage. My heart goes out to anyone who has not been so lucky .

I have a friend who is very anti-hospital, campaigns for independent MWs, had a home birth with her first, etc. With DS, I walked into hospital, being a bit unsure if I should actually be there, was fastened to the monitor, all hell broke lose and I had an emergency CS, under general, he came out covered in meconium (but thank goodness they were able to suck out the bit that he had aspirated) - everyone at the hospital went on about how lucky I was I had gone in when I did. I still don't think she accepts that there is ever a need for a hospital birth if there are no problems apparent in advance.

I really don't think the things that can go wrong in labour/birth are widely enough known, there is so much focus on how you should get back to nature and give birth in a room filled with nice harmonious music and whatever, and not enough focus on the fact that what matters is that the baby survives and is not damaged by the process (and preferably that the mother survives too!)

Midwife led births are not legal where I live, and there is much muttering about this from the expat mums and midwives - but, with huge respect for the vast majority of midwives, I am not sure it is such a bad thing.

good luck to those of you going through legal processes; they are no fun even when they don't relate to something so fundamental.

oh riven

how is she doing, are you still waiting to see the paediatrician?

2shoes

I hate reading thrads that turn into disability/autism bashing.

I couldn't read past the 5th post on that thread. I know how it probably went.

I am 10 years on from the conclusion of the legal proceedings.
They started "debriefing" me when ds was 3 days old and finally stopped in the High Court 5 years 5 months later.
Whether that gives you 'closure', I am not so sure. There are days when I believe that I got the kid I was supposed to get, that he was always meant to exist as he is and someone somewhere decided that we were perfect for him. There are still days when I'm so effing angry I could set that hospital on fire (it was when I started seriously considering this when ds was 14 months old that I gave in and got some counselling).

Riv, I am back to collecting my own gossip now

there is now a thread about abortion, oh i hate them, the oh it is ok if there are abnormalities crap.

I bypassed that one, I hate them. It makes our DC seem so insignificant.