"Post natal care and support a bit lacking"

I went in for an induction of labour and the pre natal care and care during labour was excellent but the post natal care was chaotic and not supportive enough.

When I had the baby the hospital was extremely busy and it was clear the staff were overloaded.

The care we got really suffered from this in the first days post birth.

One issue we found was that noone seemed to be coordinating the care.

We had different people coming in for different checks or to give us information and support at the same time, then leaving to let their colleagues finish but not coming back again to complete their sessions.

We had trouble establishing breastfeeding and had different and contradictory advice from the various staff in the hospital.

Additionally, due to the hospital being so busy we didn't get enough support with the feeding meaning that baby went for too long without eating on the first couple of days.

We were told by one healthcare assistant we should have been feeding with a syringe as baby wouldn't latch but noone had told us how to do this or provided syringes.

At the time it felt like we were being told off for not having been feeding baby enough despite us not knowing how to do this.

When we left after having breastfed baby successfully a couple of times we did ask what we should do if we had problems getting baby to latch at home as we had had such trouble.

We were offered some syringes to take home but when our midwife came for the follow up appointment at home they said that the syringes would not provide enough food, and that it could be dangerous to use them at home due to a choking hazard.

We found it extremely upsetting to have been underfeeding baby for a couple of days and potentially putting him at risk from feeding with the syringes despite trying to follow all of the hospital advice.