"Upsetting post natal experience"

I recently had a baby at QEUH. I had an emergency c section and my baby received 2 days care in NICU and 3 days in SCIBU.

Some feedback on my experience: 

I was placed in a ward with 3 other women who had their babies with them. I found this so upsetting and distressing that I asked to be discharged. Saving rooms for women whose babies are in neonatal shouldn’t be difficult to manage. 

There were no facilities in the toilet to help c section mothers. Nothing to hold on to hold your weight. This also seems like a huge oversight. Should all toilets not be accessible as standard? There was also no toilet roll provided on any of the 2 days I was there… thankfully I had some but it was another thing to carry along with all my sanitary wear whilst recovering from surgery. 

I found it very challenging, especially as my baby was on a different ward and my husband had to balance being with his son and his wife. This meant I was often alone and couldn’t move around very well. 

Our NICU experience with some of the nurses was challenging. Some of them would often whisper about our baby to other staff with information we didn’t even have. They were very short with us and seemed to lack compassion for our situation. We didn’t feel like we were ‘allowed’ to know things. We relied mostly on the doctors who explained things very clearly to us. I just think they could have taken time to chat us through what was happening and on anything we could have missed. There was so much we didn’t know, such a the size, weight of the baby or how he was progressing etc. at one point a nurse told me not to stroke my baby because he won’t like it… 

SCIBU was very different and our experience there was positive.