"The doctors who performed my emergency ..."

What I liked

The doctors who performed my emergency c section.

What could be improved

The lack of individual care towards patients; important details being lost between departments; the extremely poor attitudes of most of the midwives in the Edith Dare Ward and their incompetence!

Anything else?

My baby boy was undiagnosed breech. My waters started leaking 5 days before he was born by emergency c section. I was admitted into the Edith Dare Ward and induced for 3 days before being sent for a scan to see why I was not going into labour. During this time I was left for hours and hours at a time and never told anything about what I was and/or should be experiencing. I was continuously leaking fluids but the midwives insisted I was just 'having my show'...even though the fluids were constant, of a greenish colour and blood stained and continued for 3 days!

I was sent down from the delivery suite to have a scan alone and had to wait in he waiting room for well over an hour whilst experiencing contractions. When I went back up to the delivery suite and told the midwives on duty they did not believe me. It was only after a consultant saw me and confirmed that my baby was definitely breech that the midwives listened!

I was treated appallingly by the midwife on duty during my c section. They told me that a machine used to 'measure contractions' would 'actually tell the truth about what your body is really doing'. Four attempts were made to put the IV needle into me. When the anethetist saw it he could not believe what a terrible job had been made and had to redo it yet again. Whilst being wheeled into my surgery the same midwife on duty yelled at the anethetists 'Make her walk. There is nothing wrong with her!'. How humiliating for me.

My aftercare was no better. Another midwife told me (4 hours after the birth of my little boy) that I was starving my baby and proceeded to give him a bottle of formula without asking!

This was the birth of my first child and my care at this hospital has completely humiliated me and overshawdowed what should have been the most exciting time in mine and my husband's lives! I wrote a letter of complaint 7 weeks ago, but am still waiting for the hospital to acknowledge me.