"Lack of empathy and compassion"

We had a pretty horrendous experience with the community midwife team. Initially during pregnancy everything was fine - midwives were supportive, informative, and keen to answer any questions a first time mum might have. 

Post delivery, once we got home, was a different story entirely.

We had regular visits (sometimes a day apart) where midwives would weigh our baby. Some were good at first, but as time progressed it felt we were just a nuisance despite them refusing to discharge us.

After weeks of being under their care at home due to baby's weight fluctuating, when asked they refused to give us a time window when they may show up. We weren't asking for the world - just a simple morning or afternoon would have helped instead we felt utterly trapped in our own home with a baby that was losing a very minor amount of weight and midwives that continually changed their minds and advice on what we should do.

The worst day in particular saw us up at the hospital having 4 different midwives give us 4 different feeding plans within a 12 hour window. This wasn't an isolated incident - over the course of 3 weeks of midwives we had numerous midwives give us different, contradictory, feeding plans and routines all while we had to feed our baby every 3 hours including during the night time as per the instructions of a consultant from the RAH. In my view, you were effectively experimenting on a baby and torturing first time parents with no care and compassion towards us or the baby - it was just numbers and trying to force the baby's weight up to be able to discharge us.

I'm disgusted at the lack of empathy and when attempting to raise it with the midwives themselves, we were fobbed off continually with excuses of everyone trying their best or genuine disgust when we put our feet down and said we wanted one single plan over a longer period than 4 hours to monitor if it made a difference.

They forgot the care part of healthcare and have genuinely (in combination with the horrendous hospital experience) put us off ever having more kids.