New campaign to allow partners to stay on maternity wards.

[MrsCakesPremonition]

MN have started a thread about possibly supporting a new campaign to allow partners to stay overnight on maternity wards.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_campaigns/a2129215-What-do-you-think-about-spouses-partners-staying-overnight-on-postnatal-wards?msgid=48200610#48200610

I feel very uncomfortable about this for lots of practical reasons, but also partly because it feels like another safe space for women being sacrificed for the convenience of men. However, I'm aware that I may be underplaying women's right to have whatever support they want.
Is this a feminist issue and how are the rights of one group of women (to feel safe) balanced against another group of women (to have the support they want)?

[TheBogQueen]

Funnily enough I was induced with DD1 on a day ward with families and children running around and was struggling with the pain, a woman suddenly pulled back the curtain and ran to get the midwife. Who administered diamorphine to help me (shut me up) and later I was pushed to tears by another woman loudly complaining that I was snoring. I remember making DP promise to wake me if I started snoring. Of course he didn't.

I think your experience was terrible but it was unusual.

I don't think men should be in bay's overnight. Mainly due to lower dragging levels and the venerability that women feel at night. I wouldn't have liked it at all.

But I think partners could easily be accommodated in private rooms with their partners. I think it would be a nice thing for them.

[LemonSquares]

I think 'most other mothers' have actually said they would have liked their loved one with them overnight. But have then qualified it to accommodate the needs and wishes if everyone else, in the way that women are taught to do.

Actually I'm not that altruistic - I thought yes to my DH but fuck no to having to deal with everyone else’s visitors.

If I could have mine and no-one was allowed theirs around me I'd be happy. It's just not very likely really - at least not IME of current facilities.


Then it’s a quick mental calculation of benefits of my DH, considerable but with good staff would be less, verses the hell other visitors can be/are and having those overnight as well as during the day.


I can image other women feel the same as me - but I'm not sure that's actually accommodating their needs instead of mine- though I might express it like that as god forbid I appear selfish. That expression might well be social conditioning but the sentiment behind it isn’t.

[LemonSquares]

But I think partners could easily be accommodated in private rooms with their partners. I think it would be a nice thing for them.

I think that was most peoples view on other thread - however it's not what is currently possible in most cases and not what this group is actually campaigning for.

It also being in problems of monitoring - making sure the rooms are all visible - which good design in new builds could do - but might be a lot harder in older existing buildings.

[TheBogQueen]

Well that's true. I would have liked DP to stay in a room with me and everyone else's partners to be in other rooms.

You know personally when I was alone with all three of my newborns through the long nights - especially dd1 who was in special care and had meningitis - it was when I learned that the buck stopped with me. There was no one else.

[AskBasil]

"I think your experience was terrible but it was unusual. "

That particular experience might have been unusual, but the experience of men acting entitled, bullying and scary and the experience of being treated like shit during/ after labour?

Not at all unusual.

[thecageisfull]

I think your experience was terrible but it was unusual

I don't think it is particularly unusual for visitors to behave in a staggeringly inappropriate manner during visiting time. It's certainly not unusual for them to be disruptive in smaller ways. This policy would make visiting time a constant without respite. No other inpatient would be expected to put up with it. I still maintain I am not clutching my pearls and find it massively condescending for my concerns to be dismissed as such.

Partners could only be accommodated in private, en-suite rooms with millions of pounds of investment. It wouldn't be my top priority. My hospital closed maternity 97 times in the last year, sometimes for longer than 48 hours. Thats with women crammed into bays. We need to get the basics right for the actual patients before worrying about visitors.

[Cherriesandapples]

I am very uncomfortable about this. I was on a ward for 3 weeks before and after having DS. The night I was being induced was spent listening to a woman talking to her partner on a mobile who seemed to be on the run after stabbing someone! I was terrified he'd turn up! What if partners had been allowed in????

[BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure]

At my local hospital, the older private rooms are not ensuite, they still share a loo and bathroom. So private rooms only isn't the full answer.

[knitcorner]

Definitely do NOT support this on a ward, it's noisy enough in there without a load of random partners knocking around with nowhere to sleep. In a private paid-for room maybe, but not to impose other peoples partners on women in such a vulnerable position.

[Cherriesandapples]

Also, I kept needing the loo, and men kept using it and leaving it dirty and I kept cleaning it because it was filthy and didn't get cleaned properly.

[Lighthousekeeping]

They sleep in chairs. Must be very uncomfortable.

[Sabrinnnnnnnna]

Some of them don't. Some of them make the patient sleep in the chair, so they can have the bed.

[Elizabeth1984]

Oh no, I haven't managed to read through this whole thread but I 100% disagree with a campaign to allow men on wards. I spent an awful night on a ward post c-section where My London hospital was ' trialling' having men staying. The man opposite was a violent dangerously controlling psychopath he was abusing his poor partner, he wouldn't let her feed the baby when it cried, wouldn't let her hold it. She was constantly crying and begging. And he was shouting at the midwives. They were completely powerless. It's so true that point up thread about men occupying spaces. He acted like this was HIS space, and everyone bowed down and let him stamp all over them.

That women needed time alone with get baby and he wasn't letting that happen.

[combust22]

No way men ataying on wards. It's avery private time for women- learning how to breastfeed- I remember walking to the loo not realising I had left a trail of blood on the floor. Luckily it was all women around.

[qumquat]

I feel very out of step here because i thought being left on my own with a baby and no support from dp was barbaric. I couldn't care less if other people's husbands saw me trailing blood across the floor ( in fact they did during visiting hours so what's the difference?). I felt completely alone and terrified. If there's a second dc I will definitely go to Kings where partners are allowed to stay over.

[combust22]

Oh please you are not "without support" - it's hardly barbaric. How dramatic.

Women give birth under canvas in war zones- that may be hard. Not in a caring NHS hospital

[DadWasHere]

Anyway, qumquat, setting aside war covering up the insecurity of a trail of blood with even more trails of blood, I dont think you are out of step at all. People, reasonably enough, dont want to feel their safety is compromised or peace of mind disrupted, be that in hospital or out of it. Like you they just want support and they think about the mechanisms that could provide that and what might take it away. Its really just the same thing, viewed from two sides- security Vs insecurity. The extent of compromise spins off the extent to which mothers are given options in their choices without said choices impacting others.

[Anonynonny]

That's a very dismissive way to talk to someone combust22.

Lots of women do actually find there is no support. None whatsoever.

But hey, do feel free to dismiss other women's experience because it's not the same as your's. After all, we know women aren't reliable when talking about their experience and need someone else to interpret it for them. Lucky there are plenty of HCP's, men and other women ready to put right about our own experiences, eh?

[combust22]

But the NHS is there to care for the parients- not the patients and any other family memeber who may want to spend the night. Staff have a job to do and don't want the place cluttered up with extra family members.

When my husband was dying in hospital I wouldn't have dreamed of staying in hospital with him- the cancer ward would have been awash with family and friends.

Husbands are welcome to stay for the birth- but then the staff are more than able to take care of the women without husbands clogging up the wards.

[Anonynonny]

The point the other poster was making was that in fact she was the patient and didn't get any care.

That's not that unusual, I don't know why it's OK to totally dismiss what she says.

She wasn't calling for visitors to be cared for.

[Anonynonny]

And tbh I don't think the staff are "more than capable" of caring for the patients.

Mainly because of all the threads I've read on MN which demonstrate quite clearly, that women aren't always cared for after giving birth.

And also because there often just aren't enough staff there to give proper care.

[BoomBoomsCousin]

It is interesting to see how little attention and voice has been given to the experiences of the women who stayed on wards where partners staying overnight was a part of policy. The experience of the women in the pilot was overwhelmingly positive and the fears expressed on MN about the idea did not materialize.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

So, is an 'overwhelmingly positive' response good enough reason to ignore those people who would be deeply uncomfortable and unhappy about having men who were strangers to them, nearby at night?

And given that, from so many accounts on here, it appears that many visitors cannot behave considerately during the day (lots of noise, phones, arguments, staring at other women, intrusiveness - all things I have seen reported on here), why do we think people are going to behave any better at night?

[qumquat]

I did not find the hospital caring. From a feminist perspective I do think it is wrong that the mother is left to care for the baby alone, after going through birth and after several sleepless nights. I was lucky that I had a straightforward delivery and was essentially well while on the post natal ward, I still found being alone with a screaming baby who would not latch on terrifying. Friends who were unable to move post epidural/c section found it even worse. Friends whose partners were with them at Kings had a positive experience. I do think that to deny women the support of their partners in caring for their newborn for their first night is cruel. It also immediately sidelines the father from childcare - he gets to sleep while she is left to cope with the baby alone.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

I would have thought that the answer is to staff the post-natal wards properly at night, so there are enough staff to support the mothers as well as they need and deserve. Maybe they need specially trained HCAs to supplement and help the midwives - sort of NHS post-natal doulas?