"Exhausted from the process"

I write regarding my experience whilst engaging with the maternity hospital at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. Firstly, I would like to highlight that this complaint isn’t directed against the staff as the care I was provided was excellent in the circumstances and they clearly were all to aware of the delays and process issues which led to my unsatisfactory experience. They did their best to help move things along and demonstrated excellent care whilst working in what can only be described as a broken system.

I was issued an appointment for induction for late in the evening on a Tuesday. I was taken promptly and discharged at 2am. The induction was successful and the balloon fell out at 10.15am the next day. I was advised by maternity assessment to attend the hospital. After some initial assessment I was told to wait on the ward for space to become available on the labour ward for my waters to be broken. This was at around lunchtime on the Wednesday.

I was advised I could not go home as I would miss my spot in the queue so my partner and I waited til 11pm that night when eventually I sent him home.

There was no prospect of going to the labour ward at that time. I was low down on the pecking order due to others having higher risks than me despite me being overdue and nearing 40 years of age. Had I been home, my risks would have increased but not when I was admitted. This meant that potentially others would keep on taking priority over me.

The ward was noisy and I could not rest so this meant I had very little sleep over the 2 prior days. Early in the morning I was told to go to the labour ward. However once settled, an emergency came in which meant I had to wait for my waters to be broken. Then another emergency came in and despite a midwife being in my room, they could not break my waters in case they were needed in theatre as there were only 6 midwifes on shift.   I understand the position had been the same all week.

In light of the delay, I was getting increasingly anxious but more importantly fatigued. My bp was not holding well and I required 2 bags of fluids during labour to get me through it. I intended on having a gas and air labour as I had previously. The difficulty was I was tiring and psychologically drained. Thankfully I went into labour without additional intervention other than my waters being broken but I faced significant delays throughout this process that made the week very stressful.

I then could not be discharged on the day of birth due to staffing issues (as the 6 hour window would have allowed this had staff been in) and I stayed over a further night. It then took 24 hours from birth to be discharged due to only 2 midwifes covering the post natal ward and a lack of doctors to carry out the medical assessment. I was not discharged until 3pm the following day.

I was in hospital for around 2 nights longer than I should have been had there been proper organisation and staffing of the service. There was also a good chance that due to the adverse affect the delays had on me psychologically and from a fatigue perspective that I may not have been able to have a gas and air labour (which would have led to additional intervention and additional use of services if had a c section). It begs the question why I was booked in for the induction when I was when there was no real prospect of being admitted to the labour ward. 

Sadly this was not the end of my pregnancy that I wanted and I am still exhausted from the process. The staff were excellent but the procedure was dreadful resulting in a prolonged experience and being separated from my daughter for the first time for longer than expected resulting in additional stress for me.

I understand that this was not an extra ordinary week and staffing issues are consistently poor. This must be drawn to senior managements attention as this could have led to significant complications and frankly my general experience was poor. This must be looked at as the the staff are doing their best in very poor circumstances but this led to a really poor and stressful experience for me.