Lily Allen has recently jumped into the debate surrounding the lack of midwife care at NHS hospitals. Midwives are incredible caring & giving people but I do feel for them just now, they work so hard to help us and they are getting such bad press.
We all know there is a shortage of midwives and it is such an incredibly important role but how many of you were 100% happy with the care you received in hospital pre or post labour?
I am afraid I will never forget the shock of my post natal care.... After a relatively long but normal first time delivery, baby Tami, myself & Wayne were happily relaxing in the labour room. Unfortunately this happiness was shortlived when we were transported to the postnatal ward. As Wayne settled himself in the chair by my bed, a scary voice announced "why are you taking your coat off and making yourself comfortable? It's 4am you are leaving." "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, no, don't leave me" was my reaction. Yes there were other ladies in my 4 bed ward, but surely if she was worried about noise, she should be sending the new babies home not the fathers??? Off Wayne went and left me on my own with no clue what to do. While he slept peacefully at home, I panicked. When I asked the midwife if I should start feeding the baby her answer was "If you want to do it." A smiliar reponse came when I had no idea how to change a nappy and asked for help. Why I thought, did my antenatal teacher spend so much time showing us (with the help of a doll) how a baby arrives into the world, why didn't she spend more time teaching us the practicalities of what the hell do I do? So what did I do? Well I cried, disturbed Wayne from the last peaceful nights sleep he was going to have for awhile and moaned to everyone till quite frankly they couldn't wait to get rid of me and sent me home - yey!!!
With baby no.2 I was prepared!! I had heard due to bed shortages, you are kicked out pretty quickly, perfect! But no, they discovered I had Group B Strep and no matter how much I cried & complained I had to be observed for 24 hours.
However it's important to share the good as well as the bad and my care antenatally and during labour was fantastic! With baby no.2 I was luckily enough to have the same midwife who'd seen me the day before at my antenatal appointment & who also happened to have been the practise midwife (in the days a surgery had a dedicated midwife) when I had baby no.1. How lucky was I to have such personal service courtesy of the NHS. And following baby no.3's delivery, a familiar faced midwife (who funnily enough was named Posh!) who I remembered me from antenatal appointments with baby no.2 popped in to say hi and meet baby Ari!
So in my humble opinion, both antenatally & during labour midwives provide great care but why is it postnatally those gorgeous, warm, caring and friendly midwives lose their smiles and charm and turn into scary matrons?
I would love to hear your comments, especially if there are any midwives reading this, please chip in!
