"Amazing care during the birth of my first son."

At 39 weeks pregnant, I had worried throughout the night that I had felt reduced movements, I also felt that my hands and ankles were a lot more swollen than usual. I phoned the delivery suite and expressed my concerns and they told me to go straight in for monitoring, although the assured me it was most likely nothing to worry about. I arrived at the hospital and was hooked straight up, as they suspected - baby was totally fine. This put my mind at ease and I was preparing to go home and await the birth of my baby. My blood pressure was checked and was very high, so a urine sample was taken which showed protein. I was admitted straight away and induced!

The first attempt at induction did not work, neither did the second! After 3 days of trying, a doctor examined me and said that they could manually break my waters and go from there. I agreed to this and so my waters were broken and I was put onto a syntocinon drip. The midwife I had with me was absolutely amazing, she made me feel so comfortable throughout the whole process. Further into my labour, there was a shift change and I got a new midwife for the rest of my time giving birth. The labour was pretty uneventful and eventually it was time to push! After delivering my healthy 8lbs 12 baby boy, I unfortunately suffered a post partum haemorrhage and lost an estimated 1.5l of blood. I was transferred into the maternity HDU and the staff who looked after me there were amazing. I was unable to walk very far, the nurses were so kind and gave me a lovely bath to make me feel more comfortable which was so very much appreciated and gave my baby lots of cuddles and attention. My first midwife even came back the next morning to check on me after she had heard what had happened, which I thought was really lovely and shows that this is more than just a job to her.

Once I was well enough to be moved onto the general maternity ward, I was a little bit disappointed with how the care I received changed, I was told that my husband would not be able to spend the night with me and my son, so he left. I arrived on the ward, just me and baby, to find that every other new mum had her partner who had been allowed to stay. This was very unfortunate as my partner missed out on spending the night with our new baby and made things more difficult for me as I was still very poorly. I found the nurses to be a little less patient with me as a new, first time mum, and felt that they expected me to know it all. I also had asked for my catheter to be removed as it was making me extremely uncomfortable, the first nurse I asked said an outright no, I asked a second nurse as I was desperately uncomfortable and they went and checked straight away and came back immediately and said there was no reason at all that they couldn't remove it.

Overall, I had a very positive experience during my labour and delivery, the aftercare was slightly disappointing compared to the excellent care I received during and immediately after the birth. I would definitely choose Good Hope Hospital again if I were to have another baby in the future.