"Good start but felt awful by the end"

Our situation: Induction, then rapid emergency caesarean. Baby had an infection – ultimately we were in hospital for 7 days and over Christmas.

Lots of positives. I’d been very anti-caesarean (fear of surgery) but it was actually great. The staff were phenomenal at keeping us calm and took almost 100 photos (without us even realising until afterwards) of our baby’s first moments. The surgeon was brilliant – I’ve healed well and my wound is beautifully neat. My fear has been obliterated – if I were to have another baby, I’d choose a caesarean purely based on this experience.

The ICU staff were utterly fantastic – honestly couldn’t fault them. I especially appreciated that one of them always remembered and used our baby’s name (some staff just said ‘how’s baby’, etc). Thank you to this brilliant team.

We had some great midwives. Really grateful to Louise and Amanda in particular for realising when I wasn’t okay and putting things in place to support me through it.

Generally though, my ward experience was awful. If I’d been in for only a couple of days, it would’ve been very different and I’d be leaving an ‘everything was great’ story. As it was, I cried when I was discharged and got outside as I was so relieved to be free.

By day 3, the pressure of being stuck in hospital was getting to us. Baby’s observations were every 3 hours, but on top of that, various staff had to fit in: my obs, drugs runs, baby’s antibiotics, baby’s blood draws, physio visit, anaesthetist chat, room cleaning, meal calls, baby’s ICU trips for cannulas and lumbar puncture, etc etc. One time, the anaesthetist was on my right asking for caesarean feedback while my baby was having bloods taken on my left (and screaming because his feed was interrupted) and the cleaner was mopping the floor and emptying bins. Then you have to balance this with feeding your baby minimum every 3 hours but often more regularly, calming them when they’re unhappy, nappy changes, pumping furiously whenever you have a moment to breathe, basic things like eating and taking a shower, and everything taking longer because you’ve just had major surgery. It was intense and meant I was only getting maybe 2-3 hours’ broken sleep at night and typically none during the day.

The above is probably ‘just what happens’ when you have a sick baby and are in hospital – I genuinely do appreciate that. But on top of that, my husband and I ended up not only exhausted, but paranoid, broken, and with our mental health through the floor. I think this comes down to the fact there seemed to be very little appreciation of how difficult these things are for a brand new, first-time parent (especially one who’s never stayed in a hospital), and there are ways to improve this.

- Have more consideration for patients, especially those in for longer stays. Why weigh a sleeping baby at 4am when you know the process of stripping them makes them furiously wide awake and the mother is currently asleep? If there’s a sign asking for ‘no unnecessary interruptions’ after the parents have begged for more sleep, why is the full team bursting through the door yelling ho ho ho on Christmas Day (and then getting annoyed when the parents aren’t impressed about being woken from the first nap they’ve managed to take in days)? I understand wanting to spread Christmas cheer, but patient needs should come first.

- If a patient wasn’t overly appreciative about something (e.g., the Christmas incident), don’t be passive aggressive for the rest of the shift.

- Have better breastfeeding processes. I was told to unlatch my baby so he could get his antibiotic, but surely it could’ve waited a few minutes. Notably, one of the ICU staff heard about this and wasn’t impressed – they said they’d feed this back, and we experienced more passive-aggressive behaviour shortly afterwards.

- Have better privacy processes. I lost count of how many times my door was knocked and immediately opened (including by male staff) while I was topless and trying to get my baby to latch, or hooked up to a pump – half a second isn’t enough time to grab a cloth to try and preserve some dignity. At one point a random male member of the public just walked in and then left, leaving the door wide open.

- You say fathers are welcomed. Make sure all your staff know this, and that they know their own guidelines. It’s not useful if one member of staff tells him ‘help yourself to tea/coffee or toast any time’, and then another chastises him for being in the kitchen and angrily insists ‘that coffee better be for your partner’. He felt thoroughly unwelcome.

Other things:

- At one point, a midwife came to apologise for noise from their station and said we could move rooms if we wanted, which we appreciated. However this happened directly after we heard them gossiping and complaining about patients and other staff, so we wonder if they suddenly panicked we could hear.

- When we got home, a community midwife flagged that our baby’s heel prick tests hadn’t been done and my dressing hadn’t been removed, despite being past the appropriate day.

Overall, if we’d been in a couple of days, I would’ve been very happy with our care. Because we were in longer and I couldn’t get a good sleep, my mental health tanked and we ended up feeling paranoid, unwelcome, and trapped - honestly this review does nothing to capture it. My husband and I left feeling drained and it took us several weeks to properly recover. A little more understanding from the team would have gone a long way to avoid this.