"My concerns were ignored during my stay"

I had an elective c section at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow. The procedure went so well and was so happy with my big healthy baby boy. 

Afterwards were moved to a tiny claustrophobic corner with no windows and a door blocking our exit. The staff were supportive and helpful at first, bringing food, medicine etc. 

The problems started the first night when I couldn’t sleep all night because the staff were just whispering and gossiping with other staff members and patients all night. 

The next day my recovery slowed because of sleep deprivation and my milk was slow to come in so my baby started to get hungry. I had trapped air in my shoulder so couldn’t sit up with aid. Staff were supportive enough at first with the breastfeeding and helping me with care. But on the third day I’d hoped to get home but they wanted me to stay to check my feeding and do a scan on my baby for a suspected heart murmur ( he ended up having nothing wrong thankfully). 

On the third day the staffs attitudes changed to being very hostile and ignoring my calls, they seemed annoyed I was still there. One forced the baby into my breast while he was screaming (even though we had a successful feeds before) and then pulling him out my arms and feeding him formula without my consent. They never mentioned cup feeding or donor milk at all.

I was then having trouble with a patient next to me. Their had here entire extended family there all day. They were loud and had children running in an out of our space. They was a very big and kept banging into my babies crib waking him up and not apologising. They would complain at me every time my baby started crying, huffing and moaning loudly. I felt like they were bullying me.

I said to staff I was uncomfortable in this space and it was hurt my recovery. But they ignored me and said there was nothing I could do and told me to go to sleep (which I couldn’t) .

My babies weight dropped on the fourth day to 10.4% so they started freaking out at me and saying I need to just formula feed him now. I was obviously concerned but said My progress was obviously being hindered by the noise in the ward and lack of support at night for breastfeeding.

 My husband saw me that morning and he was so angry that I’d not been able to sleep for four days. I was going delirious and was in crying fits. He went immediately to the senior member of staff and said he needed me to be moved as our baby and mines was not thriving. They finally agreed to move me to private room where my progress and babies weight increased. I managed to express lots of milk for my baby and get some sleep. My husband stayed overnight and slept on the floor to help me stand up during the nights. I got home on the 5th day but my baby has struggled with breastfeeding directly because of there lack of support.

 He will feed now but I mostly express milk for him. His weight is amazing now and he is healthy and bigger than average for his age. 

 I would say overall. The top main issues with the PRM was allowing too many family members in to the wards at a time and for too long is a huge problem. At one point a patient had 10 family around her loudly partying and other cubicle had a man shouting down the phone about construction work in his house (it was hellish). They need to be more strict and kick them out. My second would be more support for breastfeeding and make it clear that babies weight can drop so supplements of donor milk is okay. Third would be to move someone if they are being bullied or feeling uncomfortable and unsafe with the patient next to them. They were definitely not well and could have hurt my baby with banging against his hospital crib.