"Antenatal bleed preterm"

Very mixed experiences had with different services. My antenatal care was commenced under Inverurie Maternity Hospital, during the booking appointment, my midwife said, don't bother texting or calling my work number I don't use it, you can email me. At one point I needed to email my midwife re appointment change and a response was received over a week later. I put this down to maybe my midwife was on annual leave, but came to find out they were working but didn't respond.

During my pregnancy, I already had complications diagnosed with my placenta and ended up having a bleed in my third trimester which lead to a 72 hour hospital stay. The midwife was very lovely and professional, we came to find out not only was I bleeding, they thought my waters had gone, based on my urine sample provided. I questioned this as I had never had any loss at all, and in hindsight, never had any loss the rest of my pregnancy. At this point, I began feeling like I was being treated as a number rather than an individual as they said we need to do the swab test to check if your waters have gone. I have since found out, a main contraindication of this test is active bleeding, they did this test whilst I was bleeding, which came back positive but nothing was explained following this and myself and my husband were just left to worry with no answers.

The next I hear from any staff, they are transferring me to the antenatal ward immediately. Still no answers given.

Luckily, I stopped bleeding around 2 hours after starting but was kept in for 72 hours following to assess if I was going into labour.

During my first full day admitted, an obstetrician came into the room and told me, I was the most stable patient, due to my risk I was being transferred to another hospital somewhere in the UK and they would tell me where soon. There was no discussion with myself or any other staff as my midwife seemed surprised as well. We asked to speak to the more senior obstetrician who it appears declined and sent the same doctor as before. The doctor from 2 hours before attends the room and following a discussion with myself and my husband, we were informed the doctor couldn't get hold of the transfer team so decided not to go ahead with the transfer but this decision could change the next day. The idea of being transferred potentially hundreds of miles away from my husband and toddler at home was terrifying and I felt powerless to the system which made it that much worse.

On discharge, I was given a discharge summary which stated due to my waters having broken I should have weekly CTGS, bloods, vaginal swabs and urine tests, antenatal clinic weekly, daily temperatures and ultrasound scans regularly. My midwife asked at my next appointment how all of these were, I informed them they had said the only thing necessary was the bloods, swab and urine tests and they didn't organise anything else. This confused everyone I came into contact with in the hospital as they agreed if my waters had truly gone, why wouldn't they do all of the necessary checks. The first CTG following my bleed, was 5 weeks after my bleed and the only reason I had scans were because I already had them arranged for my placenta.

This experience made me question every decision made about my care, the lack of mental health support in the wards and the constant fear of a bleed for the rest of my pregnancy weighed on my mind heavily.