"Pregnancy and Labour"

Overall my experience during my pregnancy and labour was excellent, this is mainly down to two individual midwives that provided an extremely high level of care. My community midwife Louise and my delivery midwife Alison.

Louise was a great support through my pregnancy, was always reassuring and had practical advice to help with any concerns or problems that occurred during my pregnancy and after delivery. I felt very supported by her and that I could speak to her about any worries I had. Her care continued after my delivery when we had some problems with our baby and she came out to the house to see us so we did not have to go into the Dr surgery at what was a very stressful time.

Alison made my long labour a very positive experience for myself and my husband, she was extremely supportive and encouraging, I felt I was in safe hands and any worries or concerns I did have Alison was able to answer and reassure us. She even came to visit me and our baby on the maternity ward the next day.

The care following on from Alison was not as positive, we were on a very busy maternity ward and the care and support was not there, the staff were stressed and so busy there wasn't any time for supportive care of the new mums and their babies. It was also missed that our baby had a 75% tongue tie, which meant the first few days at home were distressing for him and us and led to him losing 10% of his birth weight. I feel this could have been easily avoided if he had been thoroughly checked whilst in hospital. There was also some confusion between patients and the staff never seemed quite certain of your history and often muddled your case with another mum on the ward.