"From a 5* delivery service to abandoned on a ward to cope"

After what I can only say was 5* care and compassion I received throughout my labour and delivery by the amazing 1:1 midwife I had who stayed, cared for and chatted with me throughout to the emergency doctors and nurses who attended when I had difficulty, I was rather shocked about how my care went from there.

I left the delivery unit to go to Burstow ward for mine and baby's 48 hour monitoring prior to discharge consideration where I was wheeled to a corner bed on the ward in pitch black with my newborn and left to it. I was still rather up on drugs, never had a baby before and was in darkness in an unknown place with a new baby and I was completely lost.

After what felt like hours of being alone I had to ring the emergency bell just to get a midwife to come see me and just say help me please. The day and night midwives seemed so overworked, I would go hours before seeing a midwife (I was meant to have 4 hourly monitoring for me and baby but this was up to 6 at points) and this had a huge impact on me mentally with a newborn I was trying to learn to care for whilst being in a hell of a lot of pain, my husband had to chase multiple times for the midwives to attend to see us.

We were also discharged late as the hearing specialist and doctor who were meant to see us prior to discharge weren’t informed so missed us. The ward was freezing as the heating wasn’t working, I was bottle feeding and would have to wait up to 30 minutes to find a midwife to give me my milk out the fridge due to how busy they were with a screaming newborn.

I found the HCA/ward clerk extremely rude and dismissive, and physically ignored me multiple times when I was at the desk for milk or bottles. They also had an awful attitude to visitors and made my mum's visit, which was the only proper human interaction, off to a bad start due to how they spoke to her about the visiting rules to which I stepped in as I had enough of their attitude. 

Eventually on the evening of my discharge I was the only person on my ward bay. I was left in complete darkness and didn’t see a soul. A cleaner even tried to come in my bay at one point as they thought the whole place was empty. I had to chase the midwife 3 times to discharge me as it was getting later and later and eventually I got out just after midnight. 

In summary I couldn’t praise my delivery and labour more, but Burstow ward requires a lot of work. I feel midwives to patients is a huge issue and some attitudes of staff are not up to par. The wards need more care given into upkeep for babies' health and more understanding needs to be given to new mothers, especially by staff and not just leaving them in a bay to cope alone. I witnessed multiple mums on my ward having breakdowns about wanting to go home and not coping on the ward and I sympathised fully with this.