"Made us feel unsuited to the new role"

Although I had a wonderful overall experience for my scheduled C-section in March 2025, one staff member really affected my view of the experience in a negative way.

During recovery, I was taken care of well by almost all the staff. However, one staff member came in and asked how long the baby had been sleeping, and was concerned that it had been 4 hours since the baby fed. As brand new parents, we didn’t know we were supposed to wake baby for feeds. This information would have been sufficient, however they proceeded to tell us a story about a couple they once took care of who went abroad with a newborn in the car seat, and as the baby slept 5-6 hours, they didn’t wake him to feed. They said the baby the ended up passing away. This caused me to start crying as I felt like they were trying to suggest I was causing my baby harm. Moreover, they told me I should not still be taking oramorph (which I was taking along with paracetamol and ibuprofen as part of the self- administration of medication scheme), and that it was probably the reason my baby was so sleepy. We were provided with a sheet with timing of when to take each medication and were following this strictly, so suddenly being told we were doing the wrong this again made the situation worse. At a time we already felt scared and worried about having a brand new baby, the comments that were made made us feel even more unsuited to the new role. 

Besides this, all other staff we saw were amazing.