What was your NHS midwife experience?

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!

Harper Beckham takes her first step

It has been splashed all over the newspapers today that Harper Beckham has taken her first step.  Now do we really care? Not really but let's be honest ladies, that voyeuristic side of us all took a sneaky peek at the article, am I right?  Now why did we look? Is it because we are all secretly fascinated with the Beckhams? Or is it because we are curious as to what age she is and if she's an early or late walker? 

I remember with my first child, ALL her friends were walking by 12 months and rightly so, all the mums were so chuffed.  Not my wee Tami, she started crawling at 6 months, how proud and chuffed we were until the crawling went on abit too long, actually 12 months too long and that chuffed feeling dissolved into frustration.  How I envied my friends who were able to lift their babies out the car and put them staight onto their feet or going to the park, all those gorgeous pink purchases, ruined at the knee - are the memories coming back, ladies? 

Post a comment to me and let me know your thoughts and in the meantime, have a read at the Harper Beckham article on http://www.babyexpert.com/family/celebrity-mum/harper-beckham-takes-first-steps/6329.html

Ps. Tami finally walked at almost 18 months, not long you may say but after having ONE year of crawling, boy it's too long!!

David Cameron leaves daughter in pub....

I couldn't believe it today when I read that David & Samantha Cameron left their 8 year old daughter, Nancy in a pub on her own for 15 minutes!  I know they have an entourage but how could they not realise she wasn't with them.  Funnily enough, I was discussing it with my sister who is also a mum, she made a good point - how could the minders not notice she wasn't there! Time to re-think the staff I think!

It got me thinking about when I was pregnant with my first child and the terrible fears I had about forgetting her, I pictured putting her car-seat on the pavement and driving off forgetting that she was still there, going shopping and putting the shooping in the boot and forgetting the car-seat with baby was still in the trolley!

Luckily, when my baby was born I always remembered her, but when it came to the 3rd baby.... well that's another story!!!!

Have a read of the Camerons story and I'd love to hear from mums if this sort of thing nearly or did happened to them  www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18391663

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