"Lack of trained staff led too awful experience"

I have written a  complaint in December to the Ulster Hospital to highlight my experience of Postpartum care in the Maternity Unit. I am currently still awaiting an answer (3 months later) and simply receive every 4 weeks an email informing me my complaint is being investigated.

I have explained to them my experiences recently giving birth and having a c-section. 

I would like to address three main points for consideration: insufficient staffing of midwives, lack of appropriate training from the maternity support workers, reasonable adjustments for patient with a disability not met.

Let me lay out how my first night at hospital went. At 8pm my husband left because the visiting hours stopped. I then buzzed to get help to put my daughter on the breast to breastfeed. I had had a midwife helping hand express colostrum during the day because my daughter couldn’t latch. At 8pm I buzzed for the first time. I did not get to see a midwife that night until 5 am. During that time that I waited for a midwife, I was helped by maternity support staff. A support worker came to ask why I buzzed and I explained that I needed help to put my daughter on the breast and my daughter also needed changed. Both of these I couldn’t do on my own since I had had a C-section surgery that very morning and couldn’t stand on my own yet.

I was told me there was a staff meeting going on and the person would come change my daughter after it and I would need to wait for the midwife for breastfeeding support.

Despite buzzing several more times, the support staff only came back at 10 pm to change my daughter. After changing her, they left saying they would go wash their hands and did not come back straight away. My daughter was left crying in her cot without clothes on.

Being such a small baby born at 5.5 pounds and at 37+6 weeks of gestation she needed to be kept warm and fed at regular times. I made the decision to get up on my own less than 12 hours after my C-section to throw quickly a blanket over my crying daughter.

After the maternity support staff came back to put clothes on my daughter I asked them to bring the midwife to help me feed my daughter. I was told that the midwife was busy and that my daughter could stay up to 6 hours without eating and that was fine. Despite the breastfeeding assessment tool for maternity from the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative mentioning that a newborn needs at least 8 – 12 feeds in 24hours 

The NHS website also mentions that if your baby sleeps more than four hours it is recommended to wake baby to feed them including during the night for at least the first two weeks, or until they are over their birth weight. 

From these interactions, I gathered that the maternity support staff may not be aware of the guidelines regarding infant feeding that the NHS follows.

The rest of the night, until 5 am, I tried to put my daughter on the breast unsuccessfully. She took a couple drops of colostrum hand expressed but not a full feed. This led me to have extreme anxiety and panic attacks during the night. These were exacerbated by the overstimulation of being in a bay with a lot of noises instead of having my own room (which I had requested due to my disability).

At 5am, after a 9-hour long wait, a midwife came to help me put my daughter to the breast. They apologised for coming so late and explained to me that they were alone for 32 beds that night.

The insufficient staffing of midwives was a recurrent issue during my 3 days at hospital. Some time shifts during the day having an adequate number of midwives to provide breastfeeding support and night shifts where the lack of midwives meant waiting hours to get breastfeeding support.

Inadequate staffing of midwives cannot be remediated by maternity support staff unable to help with breastfeeding.

Reasonable adjustments for patients with a disability are covered in the Equality Act 2010 under which the NHS Trust must make reasonable adjustments to make sure patients with a disability can access the same maternity care as anyone else. Putting me in a bay of 4 for my first night on the justification that I would get more support (support that I did not get until 5am) made me feel misunderstood and unsupported.

I hope lessons can be learned from my experience so that other women, especially if they have a disability do not have to go through the same trauma.