Never had any major concerns or issues
Had no issues during pregnancy when attending antenatal appointments. Was fully supported when attending the maternity unit when I was 32 weeks pregnant hadn’t felt baby move in a while. Was fully reassured and checked. When going in to give birth staff listened to me although didn’t quite believe I was fully in established labour as I was managing the pain well! I was listened to during my labour and when discussing how I would like to give birth. My mum and partner were also supported well by my midwife and student midwife when speaking of my partners anxiety and fear of hospital environments. When concerns were raised by the midwives towards the end of my labour about my baby’s heartbeat staff acted quickly in taking me out of the pool and into a delivery room for monitoring. We were explained to about what was happening at all times. Our wishes were followed following the birth of our baby boy. I had to wait several hours to have stitches after tearing, staff explained this was due to emergencies needing to go in to theatre. During this time staff checked in regularly on us and kept us up to date with when I would go to theatre. When on the postnatal ward I would say there wasn’t a lot of support during the night (I didn’t feel I needed to buzz to ask for any) and didn’t really have anyone check my observations or my baby’s only when I did have to buzz as I was uncomfortable and had concerns with my baby. The one issue we did have was I identified my baby had a tongue tie (I work on a neonatal unit so aware of these) our midwife said that they would place a referral to have this assessed and seen however after not hearing anything for nearly 3 weeks I discussed this with the breastfeeding support team who followed this up and found that a referral for me or my baby hadn’t been received at the tongue tie clinic. Luckily the breastfeeding team were able to help and organised for my baby to have his RLF really quickly afterwards. This did have an impact on our breastfeeding journey due to the difficulties with feeding whilst my baby had a tongue tie. I feel this may have been different if there wasn’t such a long delay and worry that if I hadn’t spoken with the breastfeeding team how much longer we would have gone on struggling. I mentioned this to every midwife / staff member that came to visit us in the home in the first few weeks as we had lots of visits due to concern my baby had jaundice but no one followed up where our referral was even when they said they would.