"No support after the birth of my baby"

I had my baby delivered in Royal free hospital in Hempstead Heath, London. I had to be induced because my waters broke.

When the waters break the baby has to be delivered within 48 hours. My baby was delivered after 50 hours which I believe was very dangerous. Apart from that I had a really slow induction and they had 2 attempts at inducing me using two different methods. This took too long and I was exhausted when I had to push after 48 hours of no sleep and anxiety for what will happen next.

This led to having my baby delivered with the use of ventouse. This was traumatic as the ventouse broke twice. On the third try we were lucky and the baby came out. The midwives did not help at all by pressing my belly or in general they were telling me nothing other than as I was now very angry to push hard and give it my all and this kind of nonsense.

Anyways, baby delivered in the early hours of the morning and after only 2 hours they asked my husband to leave, leaving me on my own with a newborn baby in a dark room. The worst nightmare of my life. Of course I could not breast feed and did not receive any help with this whatsoever.

As I was really exhausted the only thing I wanted was to sleep but I couldn’t. I needed someone there to put baby on my breast while I was asleep and take care of it not falling down or me not going on top of it. A night nurse came and gave my baby formula. Then we did not have any help for the rest of the night. I asked someone to come with me to the toilet because I was afraid I would fall down and a member of staff came and stood out of the toilet but they were very hesitant and not willing to help. I started crying because I was feeling hopeless and then the head of the postnatal ward allowed me to let my husband come to help me. So he came and we left the next day.

No breastfeeding support, no postnatal support, no baby support, nothing. All zero. The birth of my first baby was my worst nightmare thanks to Royal free maternity and postnatal units.