"Do not choose City for good birth experience"

I am only able to write a review a few months down the line as the experience of the maternity unit at City hospital maternity unit at Bonnington ward was so upsetting and degrading. I was booked in for an induction. I arrived on time and was given a pessary at 2pm, I spoke to the midwife about my first labour, where the baby came quickly, they were friendly but dismissive. they gave very little information and I could hear everything being discussed with other women and their male partners in the 4 bedded induction bay. My husband joined me at 8pm and searched all over the ward to let the midwives know my waters had broken, eventually locating them in the kitchen having toast and tea and laughing and gossiping (one needs breaks but there was no-one at the desk). My birth plan was completely ignored, I'd asked about a water birth earlier and was told they'd get back to me, but no-one ever did, this was the case for a number of things. Eventually we got someone to see me and they were dismissive when they popped their head around the curtain, by this stage I knew I was in full labour and told them the baby was coming and they offered me paracetamol. I asked about other pain relief options and was dismissed. Eventually, after time biting the mattress during the contractions desperately trying not to make a noise in an open ward, the midwife checked me, they looked really upset and said to 'hang in there' and not to worry they delivered a baby earlier in the day safely on the ward. I had always been very very clear that I did not want to give birth on an open ward. They said it would be too late to get me to labour suite, I had no pain relief because they could not locate the gas and air on the ward. They called two other midwives and suddenly there were lots of people around the bed, it was humiliating and upsetting and I had nowhere to go, I would rather have been in a bathroom on the floor, anywhere but on an open ward. I insisted they take me to the labour suite, which they did (it was very empty- very few community cases booked in either), my husband recorded them talking and trying to back up their mistakes as we rushed to labour suite, the trolley scraped a wall as they pushed me while running the bed through open passages and in the lift down to labour suite. With immense pain, managing the contractions I had to get from the trolley to the labour suite bed and I pushed my baby out within 4 minutes of getting onto the new bed. This was a terrible experience, horrible and humiliating with the other people in the ward and in passages seeing and hearing me trying to have 'quiet' contractions for the few hours in the lead up and then the commotion before taking me to labour suite. I had no decent pain relief and I was politely ignored and then told 'it was a surprise' to them. I work in the NHS, I have family who are midwives and this was unacceptable treatment.