The 'National Shame' of England's Maternity Service - Harm Normalised

[RedToothBrush]

Women are worth shit. Harm is normalised and we STILL aren't seeing this as a government priority. Its one for the soundbites but its not close to the top of the agenda DESPITE ACTUAL IDENTIFIABLE HARM being routinely done.

65% of maternity services were judged to be failing by the CQC
Like WHAT????

Overall, 48% were rated as inadequate or requiring improvement with around a quarter receiving a lower overall rating than when last inspected.

This isn't a revelation.

The threads there have been over the years on MN on this are dreadful. MN had a campaign to try and improve services, but since then they've actually GOT WORSE.

We really need to encourage women to complain and keep complaining and start making this a politicial priority.

I don't know about anyone else, but I know several people who wanted to become midwives but have faced obstacles due to lack of available course spaces (they met the requirements for the cost) and the lack of financial support to train - particularly if later in life.

Its outrageous.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgvl8l5q0xo

Honestly I wonder if the midwife lead model is really fit for purpose any more. My community midwife wasn't great and health visitor even worse in one pregnancy. Myself and child would have come to harm if I'd followed midwife's advice.
The presumption that women don't need much care as a starting point and that preg and labour will be uncomplicated seems to be a total failure.

@Quodraceratops
Yep. And the culture that ‘normal’ birth must be promoted at all costs, that doctors are the enemy.

I have worked with some amazing midwives and been cared for by some too. I’ve worked with and been cared for many more who display clear misogyny and routinely ignore what women are telling them. I’ve come across a couple who would falsify records to paint themselves in a better light and would routinely ignore advice given by registrars on Labour Ward because they thought they knew better (despite having to call the registrar in the first place).

I am not in the UK but in my country there are similar problems. I was shocked that when I requested my notes after a really traumatic birth experience, they were so far from the reality of what actually happened. I bet that goes on a lot.

My midwife actually told me to stop yelling and be quiet. She said ‘you need to put your energy into pushing not yelling’ but I’m sure she was just annoyed at the sound, think about it all the time and the way she rolled her eyes (turns out the pushing was useless and dangerous as my baby’s head was sideways)

"Women are worth shit. Harm is normalised and we STILL aren't seeing this as a government priority"

Isn't pretty much the entire NHS inadequate at the moment? Are there particular instances of men only services being well funded or performing at a good/ outstanding level whilst maternity units being underfunded?

Or is it that the entire NHS is underfunded? Poor maternity is harmful to babies also and half of them are male .

I've complained about this being a problem on another thread and another person followed me through the entire thread telling me to shut up and stop being entitled. Because I said we all deserve good care. It's so ingrained women bash other women about it.

Clearly many aspects of the NHS are struggling but maternity does seem to be at the 'scandalously bad with preventable permanent injury and loss of life' level in multiple hospitals. There are comparable levels of terrible care but I can't think of another speciality (with the dishonourable mention of CAMHS) which is doing so badly and with such a high level of harm in so many places.

Waiting a long time for a hip replacement is rubbish but waiting too long for adequate care in labour is potentially fatal or can cause life long disability for a child.

I wonder if there is a really deep seated issue with womens rights at play here? Womens healthcare generally is less satisfactory as most medical care is developed for and tested on males. There seems to be an issue with womens health services, women often being disbelieved and specific womens health problems not prioritised. The BBC reports on hysteroscopy today today is one of many examples. Add to this policies at high level [NHS England] that mean women staff and patients do not get safe single sex spaces but are expected to share them with any male person calling himself a woman.

What we need to 'encourage women to do' is not to take the risk of pregnancy and childbirth in the first place. It's dangerous. It always has been and it always will be. We need to normalise finding happiness without needing to add currently non existing kids into the equation. Within ourselves and through adding people to our lives like friends and partners.

All these 'targets and saftey procedures' when actually even achieved are just to give a illusion of saftey. Its not safe. Not remotely. It's a huge, unnecessary gamble that we've been brainwashed into thinking is some 'happy ending'.

Opt out of that matrix and then you don't have to worry that, duh, of course women's saftey are not a priority in a patriarchal society.

Maternity services are particularly bad though. Can you give an explanation as to why other services haven't been hit by an ongoing wave of scandals in the same way as maternity?

The fact that it's disproportionately women's services that are having problems IS the story and we shouldnt just minimise this by giving the excuse that 'oh it's just the whole NHS'.

No it's not. There is a particular problem with maternity services. How many reports do you want published saying this?

Except I wanted a child. And I wanted to have a child with the least possible risk based on my underlying health.

Why is this such a demand and a stretch?

This is the goddam feminist section and we get told we should either not have children or accept the risk. I mean wtf?

I have been under complete midwife care through 2 pregnancies. My first care was NHS led and was frankly third world in level of care. My current pregnancy is private care and fantastic. The problem I don't think is midwife led care, but the lack of time NHS midwives are given to do their job. My appointments are an hour verses the 5/10 minutes I experienced with NHS.

Yes some are shit, I have been on the receiving end but often it appears it is trust policy which causes many problems.

From talking with my current midwife and in my experience, the NHS policy is increasingly about cost cutting which is cutting corners or trying to force woman to fit certain timeframes/metrics which are often not backed by research rather than following the scientific evidence and treating woman as individual patients. I am not sure moving from midwife care to doctor led care would change this culture/policy problem.

It's atrocious. The NHS is failing all but especially women. Maternity Services and Gynae are both so horribly managed and it's such a minefield.

I gave birth during Covid so i (stupidly) let off my bad treatment and put it down to covid causing issues with staffing but apparently it wasn't. I had one of the rudest staff members i've ever dealt with on the post partum ward. Ignored while i wasn't able to feed my child and asking for help and ignored about my concerns regarding tongue tie.

Also the BBC today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7498yvvjvgo

“It felt like getting a hot poker, like getting my insides ripped out. I think I described it to somebody before as like being clawed, like sharp nails, just ripping at my insides.”

Wendy said she lost consciousness twice, vomited and asked for the procedure to be stopped.

It was only when searching online she discovered thousands of other women had had similar experiences of painful hysteroscopies without anaesthetic.

But we KEEP getting told it's 'just the shortages with the NHS'.

Fuck off. Women are treated with contempt when it comes to anything gynaecological.

I heard Wes Streeting on the news this morning saying this was one of the things that keeps him awake at night - it bloody should! I only have one child, in large part due to the catastrophic failings across the board during my pregnancy and birth. DD and I are only alive because of the actions of one consultant who convinced the team I wasn’t a ‘whinger with a low pain threshold’.
Added to that was the most dehumanising 2 weeks under hospital ‘care’ where I was refused the basic right of being referred to by my name (only ever called mum) and given no information regarding my health or that of my baby while being sneered at and mocked by a particularly nasty healthcare assistant every time she was on shift.
The first time I went back to the hospital after being discharged I had a full blown panic attack and subsequently got diagnosed with PTSD.
Radical changes are needed to protect women in the most vulnerable time of their lives - these issues are well publicised so is it any wonder more and more women are deciding not to have kids?

This certainly feels like an area where MNHQ might show some leadership as they have at other points.

iirc, Baroness Merron is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with the helpful collection of Patient Safety, Women's Health and Mental Health in her actual job title. She would be a splendid point of contact for a collated expression of concern.

I totally agree with this. To me, it seems a pendulum reaction (to a more doctor-led and mysoginistic era), at the cost of mothers, again.

The problem imo is the ridiculous almost partisan division between consultant and midwife.

The cost of settling medical negligence claims in maternity is now higher than the overall maternity care budget so it doesn't even make sense from a monetary perspective.

Maternity claims make up 3/4 of all settlements, and 1,200 claims were settled last year. There is a shortage of 2,000 midwives yet training schemes are difficult to access.

What I've brought up is literally 'radical feminism' actually. The idea that women will never be free of the patriarchy if they keep having children.

Pointing out why something isn't a good idea for women in terms of physical saftey or personal freedoms doesn't make it anti feminist.

Feminism isn't just 'you can do it sister'. It's acknowledgement that we are different from men and there are risk factors we can avoid in order to help keep our freedoms. Having babies will never be safe.

Of course the choice is there if you really want kids. But I believe in thoroughly discouraging it. Especially considering a huge swathe of women have kids as they just feel they were...supposed to. And wind up slaves in their own homes. Afraid to 'split up their family' even when partners become abusive.

Sure, hospitals should do better. But if we were better educated on the risks of childbirth and the, I suppose, potential Undesirable trappings which are more prevalent for women... less of us would be in a position of needing to worry about it in the first place.

@Pinkbonbon Radical feminism has long had a problem with motherhood. For most people, having children is not something they have been brainwashed to do and it is very easy to reduce the risk to women.

There is a shortage of 2,000 midwives yet training schemes are difficult to access.

Sadly there’s now also a lot of unemployed newly qualified midwives due to hospital trusts not having the money to increase staffing or even fill vacancies. This is a national problem but worse in some areas.

I’m a midwifery lecturer and not all my students who have just finished have got jobs, it’s all over m6 social media about the national issue and my current students are worried.

that is more fixable than the issue of lack of training places. People think increase training places but we genuinely can’t. Every student needs around 22 weeks on a labour ward over three years in order to meet their competencies and also get their birth numbers. A labour ward can only have x amount of students per shift depending on the size of the ward, number of midwives per shift. Believe me every maternity hospital is packed with students. The hospitals will tell us how many students they can have per week per ward. We sit down with the hospitals and spend a lot of time planning numbers and putting this massive jigsaw together. So as a university we are strictly limited on number of places by the amount of students the hospitals can have. It’s so tight if a student misses a week or two due to illness it’s a nightmare to get them back on the ward.

People think increase training places but we genuinely can’t. Every student needs around 22 weeks on a labour ward over three years in order to meet their competencies and also get their birth numbers. A labour ward can only have x amount of students per shift depending on the size of the ward, number of midwives per shift. Believe me every maternity hospital is packed with students.

I'm glad you mentioned this, because people assume it's easy, but it isn't. Training a midwife isn't the same as teaching a history degree - you can't just pack extra people into a lecture call.

But the problem isn't really a lack of new midwives anyway. The birthrate in the UK is falling. The problem is more to do with older, experienced midwives leaving to do less stressful jobs - or to become agency midwives, which is better paid and allows people more flexibility with their working hours. If the NHS could find a way to improve retention, we'd be in a much better position.

But that's just not true though. Sure, people don't tend to die in the UK but serious injury is still common place. As are life long body changes, post natal depression, career setbacks, potentially being tied to abusers through these new connections and all manner of other shit.

Even by these new stats, we can see the hospitals aren't meeting the basic standards they set for themselves for care. But if they were, it still doesn't improve things for us much in the grand scheme of things.

And rather than protect ourselves we choose to have children.

Now maybe it's unfair to say that we're all brainwashed. Some people are aware of all the risks and take them because they really want kids. But realistically, many women seem to be in the dark about potential harms. Men too of course. But then, it arguably suits them to remain in the dark.

Many of us don't seem to give much thought into having kids either, they are simply 'the next step' in relationships. And so we find ourselves feeling trapped in a life we realise didn't want 5 years down the line, giving it 'I love my kids but...'.

We're told by society not to look into the risks and harms, that it's normal and everything will be OK and we should risk our health, mental well being, careers, personal freedoms and potentially even our lives, for people that do not even exist! It's martyrdom on a inconceivable scale!

This 'it's safe enough if the hospitals do things right' natarative is so damaging.

It's never safe. If we told our daughters, sisters and girl friends they were enough just as they are and that self care isn't selfish, far less of us would take unnecessary gambles.

Well I guess there are extremist dipshit everywhere...

...this view is flaming ridiculous. And should be treated accordingly.

It's massively unhelpful, unrealistic and one of those ideological beliefs so completely detached from reality and lived experience that it is meaningless. It's one of those purity spirals out of control

Meanwhile in the real world.