"Postnatal experience"

I went into labour in October 2023. I called the ward after more than 24 hours to say that my contractions were unbearable but was told that they weren't close enough together so they could not send out a home birth midwife. My baby was back to back, which was excruciatingly painful and I was almost suicidal by the time that my baby crowned a few hours later -- and by then it was too late for a home birth midwife to help.

There was thick meconium in the waters and the person on the maternity ward insisted on calling an ambulance. I wanted the chance to continue to give birth naturally, especially as I was so close at that point. Eventually my hb midwife arrived and was encouraging but they were unable to support me in continuing my birth at home because of the this meconium.

I had read up on it and knew the risks of aspiration were low and that meconium was common in long births. I agreed to go in the ambulance, nonetheless, as I felt I had little choice. I then endured a horrific ride to the hospital, which completely stalled the labour. I was then taken to an emergency ward, where my birth preferences were ignored and I had to bargain for an extra minute when the birth practitioner cut the cord instead of being allowed to wait for white.

I feel I was also bullied into having an episiotomy, which may have contributed to my anal incontinence, which continues 12+ months postpartum. I checked my notes and found my bloodless to have been normal. However I had been told that, had I not had an episiotomy, I was likely to have needed a transfusion. I find it hard to reconcile such divergent accounts and am saddened that women in labour are pressurised with such alarmist language. I know that these measures are designed to protect hospitals and individuals from a legal standpoint, as opposed to centring women's needs.

I am left wondering if there is a safe way to give birth to a child in the UK and, were I ever to do so again, I would be sure not to call any maternity ward, as the pain and risk entailed in free birthing would be preferable to what I feel is the unconducive and self serving offering available via medically trained staff.

On the postnatal ward I was not able to have my partner stay with me and my baby overnight, which meant that, because we live a long way from the hospital, he also could not provide me with my colostrum syringes. We then received misleading advice in a group presentation that a newborn baby only needs 4ml of colostrum per day. However this didn't take into account the fact that my baby was too jaundiced from the effects of the epidural to be able to latch (although the jaundice was also not detected at the time) and could not breastfeed.

I was left alone in a hospital bed, with a heavy vaginal bleed that needed changing every hour and a newborn who wouldn't separate, an inadequate supply of colostrum to fulfil her needs. There weren't enough staff to advise me to hand-syringe colostrum one drop at a time, let alone to help me do this (as it is a two hand job). I didn't feel able to wake everyone else up on the ward in order to get help getting my baby fed.

My sense is that the mixed wards are certainly not ideal but I feel that it's positively barbaric to prevent partners from sleeping over with the newborn and mum, even if this just means sleeping on a chair. I understand that in other local birth centres partners aren't allowed to stay over, but that the postnatal wards aren't busy and so it's much easier to get the help one needs.

My child had serious problems breastfeeding in the first two weeks of her life and we spent all of our spare time and money trying to rectify what was arguably an avoidable situation brought on by insufficient breastfeeding support in the hospital itself, along with the potentially contributing factor of having had various medical interventions that triggered jaundice and latching difficulty.

For the reasons listed above, I would do everything in my power to avoid having to give birth at Royal Devon and Exeter again. However I must stress that all the staff I came across were very well meaning and were almost without exception incredibly lovely.

However, I feel the system they are working within is not only so under-resourced as to be potentially dangerous, but it also suffers from the effects of an overly litigious culture and is so risk averse as to be causing risk to women and babies due to its patient-unfriendly practises.

While your staff were trained in ways to make me feel listened to on a superficial level, I was not ultimately listened to in the sense of being allowed to have the kind of birth that I believe would have made the transition into parenthood somewhat more empowering.