"I'll be honest and say "not ..."

What I liked

I'll be honest and say "not much". I was very thankful my stay was only for the period of 2 days with one overnight stay.

What could be improved

Respectfulness of the staff on delivery ward to both myself and my partner. I was delivering my first child which is something we both took very seriously, but we were confronted by a series of staff members who insisted on making insensitive jokes/comments and were quite intrusive on the whole experience.

The maternity ward on which I stayed following delivery was massively overcrowded, which I grant you may not be able to do much about. However, I was basically left to my own devices with my baby overnight when I had only delivered at approx 5pm. Very difficult to summon staff with buzzer, but you could always hear them chatting and laughing at the front desk. I was left in filthy bloodstained sheets all night and all the following day until I was discharged, despite asking for them to be changed. I never saw a doctor following the actual birth of my baby and despite the instruction being given by the doctor in the operating theatre that I should have a blood test the following day as I had lost a massive amount of blood this was never followed up on despite repeated enquiries my myself. I finally managed to get a test at my GP a couple of weeks later and I was severely anaemic (my tests were fine all through pregnancy). When I was blessedly discharged I was given no guidelines as to what precautions/aftercare I should take with myself when I got home and consequently 'overdid' it in the first couple of days and made myself exceptionally unwell for the following 6 weeks where I had to have daily district nurse/GP care. I can honestly say that every department failed me and made a joyous occasion to be a nightmare for the first 6 weeks of motherhood.

Anything else?

As you can probably tell, my experience has made me feel quite angry and upset and I decided to contact the MK hospital helpline that is set up to counsel women on their birth experience in the hospital. It was always on answerphone with a message that did not even state whether I had got through to the right number. I would suggest that MK Hospital are probably not interested in hearing an honest appraisal of their maternity services.