"Distressing Birth in Delivery Ward"

I gave birth here yesterday and feel so upset and traumatised by the delivery, the run-up to it and the immediate aftercarethat I am writing this review rather than enjoying precious time with my newborn son.

Some of the staff we met at North Mid were amazing so I will try not to generalise, but the overall experience was so bad and so dependent on exactly whom you spoke to that I seriously question whether there is any management of this department at all.

Firstly, I was railroaded into an induction by North Mid consultants because I turned 40 a month ago. They made me feel if I asked about the risks of inducing itself, then I was putting my unborn baby at risk and would only have myself to blame if he was stillborn. They just didn't seem prepared to have a woman asking questions about what was going to be done to her, and treated me like I couldn't possibly understand it all anyway (I am actually a science PhD). It was very clear that their concern was not my individual case but avoiding lawsuits (one even said as much) and so they just wanted to apply a 'rule' that even they didn't all believe in.

So we started that process unhappily on Thursday and sure enough my body wasn't ready and I realised I was heading for a totally unnecessary c-section. We fought to abandon the induction with great trauma and finally got 'released' late on Thursday night.

I went into natural labour 2 days later, and although I planned on using the Birth Centre, accepted advice to go to Delivery Ward as my blood sugar was low and I was feeling weak and shaky. Bizarrely, I then got put on a saline drip which obviously does nothing for blood sugar, and instead ties you to the bed, but I was too weak to question it. Then, the midwife who was supposed to be handling my delivery just kept disappearing throughout the night for 10, 15, 20 minutes at a time. No advice, no warning, nothing! More than once my husband went to try and find them, so I was left on my own in advanced labour, in severe pain and attached to drips and monitors so I couldn't move around. When the midwife was in the room they would never say anything about what the were doing. The midwife didn't give any advice go to me about what to do when. The midwife got my name wrong constantly, I was still correcting them whilst pushing my baby out. When it was finally over 7 hours later, I was in shock and upset, but they never said anything to me about the health of the baby, they never congratulated us and they just left us in the room, no word of what was to happen next, no goodbye, nothing. They finally came back an hour or so later just to pick up their jacket!!

After that, it's not even worth my going into how many times we had conversations with people who then just disappeared as shifts changed, how many times we were left for hours waiting for some unknown procedure to happen etc.

I had a lovely, straightforward delivery at Whittington 3 years ago, so I know what good care looks like and this hospital couldn't be more different