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

I took the decision to have an elective C-section because of birth fear and because having looked at the risks and stats and general treatment of women in labour felt for my life circumstances it was, on balance, the safest option for me both mentally and physically.

I have written a lot on birth fear and trauma and how poor care is driving a lot of it because women want to avoid birth injuries and mental injuries and abuse.

Given there's an increase in issues and it's not reflected in other Western Europe Countries in the same way, this isn't purely an issue of 'birth being bad'. It's definitely a case of poor handling of birth.

I think both things can be true simultaneously: UK maternity care is a scandal that needs fixing

And

Women are encouraged to have kids and not told about the risks (I certainly had no idea and realise now I was fortunate and got off lightly. My mum tends to minimise other women's issues - while other story - and scoffed at birth horror stories and tales of pain. I don't have older sisters and didn't at that point have older friends to advise me).

The thing is, it's not actually that extremist.
It's actually pretty innate to avoid physical harm. So - we have to ask ourselves why we aren't doing that?

For so long we didn't have the choice. But now we do.

So having kids... has simply become a cultural norm. One that harms women. Consistently.

These kids don't exist. And yet we risk our very lives for them.

That doesn't make sense.

Are you a parody account, @Pinkbonbon?

I agree that this is problematic too. There was an understandable reaction to the over medicalisation of birth in the early 20th century but this seems to have morphed into wilful denial that women who have major abdominal surgery; perineal and internal tears, cuts stitches; sleep deprivation etc. might need nursing care, nutrition, rest and support.

There no logic to it when on a nearby surgical ward patients are actively cared for after comparable surgery. It is horrible and women deserve better.

I mean imagine tipping up at the surgical ward and leaving a newborn baby with your post-op brother to look after for an afternoon. There would be an uproar as he’s post op and needs to rest and recover (leaving aside the issue of other people on the ward). Yet women are left with unanswered buzzers after 30 hours labours ending in C-section with numb legs, catheters and no food of the timing is unlucky.

So many women end up with infected scars, PPD and other problems.

I agree that this is problematic too. There was an understandable reaction to the over medicalisation of birth in the early 20th century but this seems to have morphed into wilful denial that women who have major abdominal surgery; perineal and internal tears, cuts stitches; sleep deprivation etc. might need nursing care, nutrition, rest and support.

It isn't the midwife led model that is responsible for this though. If you switched to a doctor led model you aren't suddenly going to have women being properly looked after post-birth and given lots of TLC and rest and support. Most of the crappy care happens on consultant-led units, where most women have their babies.

I have worked in the NHS as a midwife and now work in Canada. The biggest problem in the UK is staffing. There is just not adequate time, money or resources to look after women appropriately in either pregnancy or postnatally. Home visits have been slashed and midwives' patient loads on postnatal wards are insane. There is often no opportunity to provide the most basic levels of care. Crazy amounts of documentation and double charting and forms don't actually help, they just give less time for patient care.

Exceptions do exist. NHS home birth teams are often amazing in providing excellent care; my sister's experience of two births with a team in south London was second to none, even though neither birth ended up being at home.

There is also a massive culture problem in the NHS of not individualizing care, and of a lot of midwives and doctors being ground down by the job and becoming incredibly uncaring. I don't believe they go into it with that intention, but it needs to be addressed. I'm sure better working conditions and more time would go a long way.

really? REALLY? on a thread about the awful maternity service you had to "wah wah what about da menz"?

go away and think about what you did

Yeah, and frankly I think this attitude around motherhood is an element within feminism that has at it's heart a kind of deep hatred for the female body. That kind of feminism is never going to appeal to most women.

The idea that "the patriarchy" is responsible for women wanting to be mothers is pretty fucked up.

As far as women being encouraged to have kids - in the UK, and the west generally, most women have fewer children than they would like, due to the constraints of finances, work and housing

Completely agree. Feminism's own mommy issues (hey, we all have them!).

Both those things can be true as well, can't they? We are expected to have kids and perhaps lots of women also want more.

Obviously it's different for every individual woman but
society definitely treats women without children with suspicion. Women are constantly asked when we're going to have kids, then when we're having the next one...

It's a definite assumption that it's something you will do.

Do we need trained midwifes to do a lot of the care on a maternity ward?

We could do a lot better just with additional support staff. But there isn't even that.

Most people have kids. It's expected in the sense that it's very common. Asking when someone is going to have a child, while rather personal, isn't necessarily telling them they ought to have kids, it's usually based on the fact that most people do in fact have kids.

Some people find that people around them, maybe parents, do want them to have kids. Others very much feel they are explicitly discouraged from having children - and especially from having more than one or two children.

But given that most women want children and many want more than they can have, saying the way forward is telling women they actually don't want them seems pretty useless - not to mention deeply presumptuous.

Bottom line: anywhere there are humans, there are mothers. Actual living people. Not future people, or imaginary people, or hallucinations of the patriarchy.

Real people. People with pelvic floors (does if get more real than that?), sore tits and lives to live. Ignoring their needs is not OK. You don't have to think that motherhood is obligatory to understand this.

Quite often I find myself wanting to shout this with a megaphone 😅

In think you're confusing me with someone else? I'm not telling anyone that they don't want / shouldn't want children. I certainly don't think that's the answer to crap maternity services.

I was commenting (possibly not very clearly) on how having children is quite a risky thing to undertake at the best of times, but that risk is minimised by society because, as you say, it's something most people do so the risk seems to be ignored/ minimised.

So we have this thing that's already very risky, and all the risk is necessarily borne by women, often unknowingly (because no one tells us how risky it actually is) and yet nothing seems to be done to make it safer and easier. It's rubbish.

If men had the babies, you can bet that the care would be much better and money would be found to improve things 😪

Midwives need much better training. Some nurses can be hard and rude. Childbirth is not easy and not without risks and of course very painful. I have heard a midwife say "you are just having a baby. You are not ill". Maternity care needs ti change drastically. Lives are at risk.

I qualified as a midwife aged 40 and left NHS care after 3 years. The culture of bullying was insane and dangerous. I had doctors warning me to ‘get that woman on synto before handover’ (synto is an induction drug) to make the doctors look better even though it wasn’t safe for the women. I had experienced midwives walking off for a chat/cigarette leaving me as a newly qualified midwife in a high risk situation. As a student midwife, I put in a formal complaint about a midwife I worked with who shouted at the labouring woman, examined her without consent and physically forced her legs open. There was an investigation but that midwife was back working on the wards a few weeks later. It was unsafe because I became too scared to ask for help. When I complained to my manager about one experienced midwife bullying me (literally shouting at me in front of other midwives and women when I was unsure what to do), I was told this is when I needed to develop ‘resilience’. When I moved on to the postnatal ward, I was looking after 8 women and 8 babies - 16 patients requiring observations, medication, care, advice, breastfeeding support, catheter care etc. you do the maths! I was running up and down the corridors for 12 hours per shift, not giving good care to anyone. In the community, I was regularly working 10 hours days while being paid for 7.5. So I left. The government need to actually speak to midwives (past and present) to find out what is going on. We need more funding and a culture where everyone works together. And the ability to boot out bad apples.

I was talking to a recently retired consultant paediatrician the other day and she mentioned that there is real disparity between Scottish and English statistics. For example Scotland has gotten maternal deaths to near Scandinavian levels whereas in England they’ve risen to near U.S. levels which has some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

Woman’s Hour did an interview with the chief executive of the RCM a couple of days ago in which she was very resistant to any suggestion that some midwives were simply not fit for their roles, whether by temperament or competence and was somewhat dismissive of listeners’ reports of poor and dangerous care linked to this.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002dzfr

What we need to 'encourage women to do' is not to take the risk of pregnancy and childbirth in the first place

This is just silly (especially on here) for about a zillion reasons.

I heard that Woman's Hour interview and was shocked at her complacency and attitude. Indefensible.

Well we've seen what the progress pride crew really think of women. They have no respect or care for women or for decency, they won't listen to women - and the NHS is full of it. They've probably moved the maternity budget over to mastectomies and augmentations.

Agree with you@Toseland. BTW - is your username a reference to 'The Children of Green Knowe'? I absolutely loved that series (and the book).

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.

@ineedanewsofa That is shocking - I hope you complained to the hospital.