Birth in a time of coronavirus

[CaraDune]

It's that rare thing - an informative and moving Guardian article:

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/04/more-births-car-park-midwifes-experience-covid-19-crisis
(Heads up - contains very sad discussion of still birth )

I was particularly struck by this, though:
"The postnatal ward is a lovely place to be at the moment. The curtains are open, and women are helping each other and bonding in a way that we thought was a thing of the past. One of the things we will probably review is how often partners are allowed in. Now that is not happening, there is a spirit of female empowerment and togetherness. Those who have had babies before are helping first-timers with breastfeeding, for example. There is also the ability to share stories and to come to terms with your birth experience."

I would def prefer my husband- the Father of my child to be near me than some random women. I can get female empowerment from my friends and family when I get home!

I am due to give birth at the end of the month. The good news is my local hospital are alloing birth partners on the post natal ward from 8am-8pm, which was the same as the visiting hours at a different hospital I gave birth in 3 years ago.

Partners are a must on post natal wards as there is simply not enough support avaliable otherwise.

I stayed 5 days after my first birth following a c- section. The only thing that got me through was my partner visiting in the day allowing me to shower and sleep. I was holding the baby all night as she was a newborn that wanted to held. I got no support and no sleep.

The thought of not having my partners support on the post natal ward scared me more than birth itself. I was planning on discarging myself as soon as possible.

I won't be surprised at an increase in ptsd in new mothers and I would expect a further decrease to those successfully breast feeding given the lack of post natal support avaliable at the moment.

@Pumpertrumper I actually agree with the ‘feminists’ as you call them. I think it’s important that women who don’t feel safe around strange men are given the option of a women only ward, hopefully with adequate midwife and support care. But until there is sufficient funding to have enough support for every mother there should also be the option of partner-accompanied wards.

Just removing the partners with no additional professional support given will lead to more experiences like mine.

I completely get why women want their own husband there. I also get (to a lesser extent) why some women, who've been lucky enough only to encounter "nice men" aren't bothered by other people's husbands.

But, for me it's one of those "no trumps yes" situations.

There are women who will be victims of DV, or past sexual assault. (There will also be women who are victims of ongoing DV, whose violent partners will be on the ward). There have been threads on this in the past with hair raising incidents (including one midwife who'd found a man raping his wife a matter of hours after she'd given birth). Not all men, obviously, in fact, mercifully only a tiny minority - but I still don't want strange male members of the public wandering round hospital wards in the middle of the night when I'm trying to sleep.

And if you bother to look upthread, you'll see several posters, myself included, saying explicitly that what's needed is more funding for the NHS, so that partners aren't required to cover up for the inadequacies of staffing. Better accommodation would also be nice. Someone even suggested the excellent compromise on a multi-bay ward of having some bays set aside for those who wanted their partners to stay and other bays set aside for those who wanted to be or were on their own (perhaps because their partner was at home caring for older children).

for your friend flubber. But it's worth remembering the stats - over 98% of sexual violence is perpetrated by men, and for instance for the year ending March 2019, Women's Aid states that the best estimate (CSEW data) shows 1.6 million women and girls experienced domestic violence. So your friend's experience, though horrific, I think is sufficiently unusual that it could be dealt with by a private room (most wards typically have one or two of these, and your friend would clearly have a priority need for one).

Male violence, sadly, is much more widespread.

No, you misunderstand me. I'm discussing numbers and the way an overstretched health service might make best use of the limited space it's got while helping all women to feel safe and supported in that space. (And let me say my ideal world would involve private rooms for all and a hell of a lot more midwives and other HCPs so that all women and their partners were supported properly.) But we are where we are, with shared wards, usually in small bays of between 4 and 8 beds, generally (if my local hospital is any guide) with one or two single rooms usually held aside for medical need (more severe conditions, infection control, etc.)

Anyone who is in need of private space should get that - whether it be private space away from men they don't know, or private space away from women they don't know. It's just that the numbers are very different - of the women who have suffered sexual abuse (about 25% of us) there are a proportion who will find that the psychological after effects are such that they don't want to be around strange men at all, or in some very rare instances, around strange women either. The point I'm making with the stats is that at any one time you may well have several women who want to be accommodated away from men they don't know (enough to fill a bay of a ward) whereas - given what we know about the stats on sexual violence - it will be a relatively rare occurrence to come across a woman who finds having to share with other women is traumatising. And in terms of the logistics of organising one's hospital ward, this very rare (but still very distressing eventuality for the woman concerned) is probably best dealt with by giving her a separate room entirely.

Unless your point is that you are disputing the statistics on the male/female split among perpetrators of sexual violence (98% to 2%), and the fact that the majority of victims of sexual violence are women?

Agree with this:
"I think it’s important that women who don’t feel safe around strange men are given the option of a women only ward, hopefully with adequate midwife and support care. But until there is sufficient funding to have enough support for every mother there should also be the option of partner-accompanied wards."

Also agree with OP. I think the numbers of women wanting a female-only space (ie feeling unsafe around men) will be higher than the numbers wanting a private space because they feel unsafe around unknown women. The former may justify a dedicated ward/bays and the latter may be accommodated by a private room when needed.