"My birth experience"

I started having contractions in the evening the day after my baby was due. I called the hospital and as they were still 5-7 minutes apart they told me to stay home until they became more frequent. The next day, my contractions started getting worse so we called and told them we are coming to check if the baby is ready.

Arrived to the hospital at around 5:30/6pm and I was in so much pain and after 30 minutes a midwife saw me and said that they couldn’t see how dilated I was due to the mucus and that they can’t do a vaginal exam because of the infection risk, they told me to walk for a while and stand as the mucus might come out and they could see.

40 minutes after excruciating pain as I was in labour and I wasn’t offered nothing for the pain, I came back and my midwife was leaving as it was 8 pm and they were passing their notes to another one so they told us to wait another 30 minutes, just great treatment.

When finally this new midwife checked me they done an internal exam without mentioning nothing about infection or whatever and told I was dilated 5 cm, amazing 5 cm without even an ibuprofen yay me. This midwife asked me when my waters broke and I was unsure as I had some leaks the previous night so almost 24 hours before.

My plan was to give birth in water and couldn’t have an epidural because they do that only on the labour ward. I was offered gas & air and I gladly used that and this midwife sent me upstairs with a young member of staff that was another midwife I guess.

Arrived upstairs, this member of staff had difficulty at listening to the baby and asked somebody outside to come help, the other one said that I won’t be able to use the pool as there is risk of infection as my waters broke last night (now I’m wondering didn’t the midwife from downstairs know that? Why did they send me there if I couldn’t use the pool to ease the pain and give birth?)

I took a shower and few minutes after the young member of staff that was with us they still struggled to find the heartbeat, asked for their colleague to come but the other one didn’t, even though there was no one else but me on the ward and coming back after asking for help said that by measuring my belly they think the baby is too big and I will be transferred in the labour ward in case there were complications as where I was now there were no doctors.

Arrived downstairs, my pain was getting worse and worse and this new midwife was no better than the previous ones, they even had an attitude🫤. I asked for an epidural as I couldn’t use the water in the bath to soothe the pain and relax and they said that they will need to check my blood first, send it to a doctor, and that anyway will take few hours. They took their time, and a few times even left the room and asked my husband to monitor the baby’s heartbeat 🤨 unbelievable, and as well used the excuse of the infection to not do an internal exam and help me with that epidural.

Just at midnight the midwife checked and that’s when all my waters broke and I was already dilated 8 cm. At that point they said that is better not to do the epidural as it takes time to kick in and I’m almost there. We trusted the midwife. The bad news is that with every contraction I was in such pain that my baby was suffering, her heartbeat was dropping to 60 instead on 130 and even the gas & air didn’t help anymore. I felt the urge to push as well a few times and they told me not to because I’m not fully dilated.

A doctor came in and checked me, done an exam, and the baby had her first meconium so another worry now, this happened around the same time my waters broke and that was 5 hours before my baby was born. They left her in for almost 5 hours with the meconium and with her heartbeat getting so poor when I had contractions.

I don’t have words to describe my frustration and anger towards the treatment I receeived. Thankfully at least this doctor told me that we need to get the baby out through C-section or forceps so they took me to the theatre and after an ultrasound the doctor decided it was gonna be a C-section. After suffering the pains of labour up to 9 cm dilated without epidural and my poor baby getting distressed and being at risk of ingesting meconium, she was born in the morning at 4:52 through an emergency C-section . 

It was the most traumatic experience of my life and I feel the staff of this hospital lack in both compassion and knowledge.