"Birth centre yes, but avoid the labour ward"

I gave birth at St Helier recently and was left pretty traumatised after the experience I went through. I wanted to have a natural birth with minimal interventions and therefore opted for the birth centre. The staff there were really good and supportive and I was treated with dignity and respect. The atmosphere at the birth centre was really good and I was actually enjoying the labour at that stage. No decisions were forced upon me, but instead I was able to decide when and if I wanted any pain relief, etc. There were no interruptions from the medical personnel and the only people we saw, were the midwives who were looking after us.

Unfortunately due to various reasons my labour was very long and in the end I decided to opt for epidural, which meant moving to the labour ward. My experience there was very different to the birth centre and contributed greatly to my postnatal depression. Starting with the bright lights and not a very supportive midwife, through to constant interruption and various medical staff members popping in and out of the room at will, sometimes without knocking, the environment made me feel very uncomfortable. During the morning I had 5 different people walking into the room and discussing my case without paying any attention to me or my feelings and behaving as tough I was not there or unable to listen or understand. When it got to giving birth to my son, I was treated like a piece of meat, handled in the way it was convenient to the doctor and without being listened to, respected or without having the ability to make a decision. There was no option or an informed consent as the decision were being made without anything being explained to me and no attention was paid to how I was feeling emotionally. The only goal was to "get the baby out at any cost" so that a tick could be placed in the box.

The postnatal ward was okay, although very understaffed over the weekend, to the point that we had to search for the midwife, as there was only one of them for the whole ward. The attention of the staff was very hit and miss with different information given by different midwives.

The overall experience left a sour taste in my mouth with the experience in the labour ward leaving me pretty traumatised. I strongly think that this was the main contributor to my postnatal depression and I would ask anyone I know to avoid the labour ward in this hospital until the staff start treating mothers as more than delivery machines.