"Brilliant midwives but some policies could be reviewed"

I want to start off by saying that all of the midwives that I encountered were absolutely lovely and amazing in dealing with the circumstances that my birth ended up in (as I’ll discuss more later). However, there were some policies that made my son’s birth a mixed experience. 

Recently I was induced for being post-dates. I was induced in the afternoon and by the time visiting hours for birthing partners had ended I was having contractions every four minutes. However, as I was not having three or four contractions within ten minutes my husband had to go home. This was the first aspect of policy that made the birth a mixed experience as while I might not have been in active labour at that point, I was still in a lot of pain and having to go through that alone (even with the pain relief available) was very frightening and difficult. 

The birth took a turn as labour progressed very quickly and I delivered without my birthing partners being able to be present it was that quick (I had hoped for my mum and husband to be able to come to HFH for the birth if induction was successful). Again, the midwives dealing with me were amazing and I couldn’t fault them for this, as it was very sudden and they are trying to monitor a lot of women on the induction bay with short-staffing. 

Later on, I was admitted to a side-room for recovery. My husband was not allowed to stay overnight, and I understand that this can be a safeguarding issue, particularly on shared bays. However, I think that consideration should possibly be given to women who have faced traumatic births, especially when they are in side-rooms, and partners can stay overnight in Home from Home, showing that it is possible to work through these safeguarding issues. By the time he was having to leave, I had been awake from around 2am and had not slept since then as I had given birth, been in theatre for third-degree tearing and was struggling to sleep as I was coming to terms with the whirlwind that was the birth. 

This was my first baby and he barely slept at all that night, adding another layer of stress to the experience as I was in a state of shock, while also trying to take care of my baby on my own. I understand that midwives are on-call if you press your buzzer, but obviously they can’t stay with you the whole night and are trying to deal with a large volume of women and babies. Especially as my husband was not able to be at the birth, making it an emotionally-isolated situation, I feel that being able to have him with me overnight would have reduced my sense of trauma as this sense of isolation returned in the night and was therefore magnified in the overall birth experience.

Again, I would like to state that the midwives helping me were brilliant and of course there are elements of birth that can’t be controlled, but I think that if some of these policies were reviewed, it could help minimise some women’s experience of birth trauma in the future.