"Maternity hospital staff amazing but not so in the community team"

I had my baby 1 year ago, firstly I want to say the staff in the labour ward were fantastic. My waters went 3 weeks early, and I had to be induced. The midwife who helped with delivery was amazing, and I felt fully supported even when things didn't go to plan and I needed intervention to get my baby out quickly.

Sadly, my experience of the community team was anything but nice. I was initially placed with the central team who were lovely, but then it was realized that due to my address I should have been under the North team. I then struggled to ever get hold of a midwife, they NEVER answered the phones, rarely called me back despite leaving numerous messages. I had an appointment at 36 weeks, where I wanted to discuss my birth plan as I had some questions. The answers I received to questions about monitoring the baby etc was ask the midwife, I don't know, they do it the same as us with a Doppler (they don't, they use completely different machines and I ended up with a probe being attached to babies head in an emergency!). I was told it was too soon to discuss my birth plan and to discuss it when I was seen at 39 weeks. I never got to this point as my waters went 3 days later!

I was appalled by the North team community midwife, and feel I wasn't given any support and the appointments were purely a tickbox exercise for them rather than actually assessing me or my baby. I felt this midwife really didn't care at all, and I do not feel her knowledge of labour and birth were actually up to date.

To end on a high, after my baby was born we were kept in over night. there was a HCA, she did bank and was a student nurse. Overnight I was exhausted with a baby who wouldn't stop screaming, she took my baby off me, cuddled her for an hour to let me sleep. She was my saviour after a tricky and long 4 days.

If I ever have another baby, I am not sure I would use Croydon again, but this is simply because of the community midwife rather than the hospital staff as they were all knowledgeable, polite, personable and generally lovely!