"Postnatal debrief"

I received a letter in January outlining some complications that had arisen towards the end of my pregnancy and post-delivery. The letter ended by inviting me to arrange a postnatal debrief with the consultant. 

Having been so fully immersed in caring for a newborn for the last six months, I hadn’t given much thought to these complications and their possible future impact and subsequently decided that the debrief would be helpful and worthwhile; while also subconsciously worrying if it’s wasting valuable time of a consultant.

With encouragement from my husband, I followed instructions on the letter and they took details of my availability and told me I would receive a call to confirm the appointment. I was also advised that it would not be appropriate to bring the baby along and should therefore arrange childcare. 

Unfortunately, In the eight weeks which followed, I didn’t receive any call to arrange the appointment and so I called the number on the letter again and was advised that the member of staff who took my initial call was not available and therefore it hadn’t been followed up (in eight weeks?!). I was again advised that someone would call me back to arrange an appointment. Again, this call never took place. Instead, I received a letter on advising an appointment for early the following week. This left very short notice for my husband to arrange time off work to attend with me and no time to organize the childcare as advised, resulting in a relative having to ask for an emergency annual leave day from work. 

Unfortunately, on the day whilst traveling to drop the baby to the arranged childcare, I received a call at to advise my appointment - which was two hours later - was now cancelled. Such was the short notice that my husband was already traveling home from Edinburgh, using unpaid leave to do so. Having expressed my frustrations at the very short notice given, these were dismissed by the assertion that the person we were to see was isolating due to Covid and that no one could have let me know any sooner. 

While the latter is unfortunate and unavoidable, I can’t help but feel that the overall system in place to facilitate these types of sensitive meeting with patients simply does not work. The six month delay in offering the debrief followed by a further two months to arrange an appointment leaves a feeling that the offer in the first place was nothing more than a paper exercise, one which is hoped is not accepted by the patient. Otherwise, would the arrangement of this aftercare need to be steered by the patient themselves? This further feeds the feelings of wasting valuable staff time, especially during Covid restrictions- which was why I was initially hesitant to take up the offer. I now still feel hesitant to take up the appointment but feel that attention needs drawn to the process and administration in order to avoid other new mums feeling the way I do now.