"Losing a child"

Starting from the beginning. 

I went for a private scan  and found out my baby had no heart beat and stopping growing at 8 +4. The very next day I phone the Vale of Leven Hospital Maternity Unit to ask what my next steps would be and what to do. This is something I have never had to go through before, I took it extremely hard and it's taken me until now to be able to express my concerns on how badly I was treated in the worst stage of my life.

When I phoned I was told there was no appointments for me until the following week. This obviously upset me as I'd already been carrying inside me a deceased baby for 3 weeks and I was told I would need to wait up to a week. However, they managed to give me a squeezed in appointment.

I then started having light bleeding on this day which then turned in to heavier bleeding. I phoned the Vale Hospital seeking more support and I was told to go to triage if it was that bad. However, I chose to stay at home. I made this decision because I was exhausted I hadn't slept in nearly a week because as you can imagine, I've got this baby inside me that's not alive and no one was helping me, noone told me the process, I felt alone!

The thought of the long waiting times was not ok in my current state. I phoned the Vale Hospital and was told to not attend the arranged appointment if I had started to bleed and to let it happen naturally.

However, I later found out that was the wrong advice and I should have still attended that appointment I'd been made to wait for. 

After all that they then gave me an appointment for 4 days after the original one, which the Vale Hospital cancelled and failed to let me know until I seen it on the badger app. So I already had to wait X amount of days for the initial confirmation appointment for them to cancel my appointment and not tell me. I managed to get an appointment for the following day but again, that's an extra day I had to anxiously wait. So in all that was an extra week I had to wait for closure before being seen after finding out I was suffering a loss, a whole extra week! A whole extra week of no sleep, a whole extra week of trying to still parent, a whole extra week of emotions. 

When I finally got in touch with my appointed midwife, the way I was spoken to on the phone completely broke me even more than I already was. I was upset about them pushing back my confirmation appointment by an extra few days, but instead of asking me how I was or sorry to hear what I was going through she just continued to ask me if I wanted to take the appointment for the following week as it's all there was. She completely disregarded me and my feelings. I remember I kept asking her why she wouldn't communicate with me and she actually put me on hold to confirm the appointment, that was a real kicker. I remember crying so hard down the phone to her and she just straight up asked me if I wanted the appointment or not. Even though I had an appointment already but they chose to cancel it and never told me why. I had to chase them for a new one and it felt further away from the original one I had, so imagine how this made me feel. 

3 days before I was supposed to have the appointment, I passed the baby naturally at home after having cramps all morning. So from finding out I lost to passing almost a week later I did not see a single midwife because there was apparently no appointments for me. And the one I did have I was told not to attend because I had started to bleed.

I passed the baby around 12pm, after which I phoned the Vale Hospital again and I expressed my concern with how much blood I was losing, by this point I chose to go to RAH triage. I was put on a drip and a doctor helped removed clots. I lost very large amounts just in hospital alone not counting what I'd lost at home.

 I finally saw someone 3 days later, this was what they called the confirmation appointment to confirm I had no tissues left inside me. So that's what, 9 days I waited to be seen by anyone at the Vale of Leven hospital, any time I phoned for support or advice I was redirected elsewhere. I felt noone could be bothered with me, no one shown me any real comfort and I'm disappointed and feel embarrassed that I tried to chase for help. 9 days is a long time left in your own head! 

It's taken me from then till now to be able to tell my story and I hope it's taken seriously, I was traumatised by this and still am. I'm disgusted how I was treated and I felt I received no caring or compassion from the team members at Vale of Leven during those 9 days.

Feeling like a statistic or a number is not OK being told over and over that it's common is also not OK!