"The Labour unit, they saved my ..."

What I liked

The Labour unit, they saved my sons life, giving me an emergency C-Section very fast and the staff where excellent.

What could be improved

The Birth centre is awful they wouldn't let me in, I got contractions at 3am, I phoned up the birth centre I was booked into they said we will not take you unless you are in established labour, getting contractions every 2-3 mins, come here now and we will just send you home.

Didn't matter what I said same response every time 8am get lost, 11am get lost, 5pm get lost, 8pm I was still having what they call irregular contractions, I told em right it's every 2-3 mins I'm coming in now (with the intention of refusing to leave unless they dragged me out), I got told everyone was on a break and call back in an hour, then they took the phone off the hook.

At that point I phoned 999, when I got to the hospital I was taken to the Labour Unit, turned out I had been in established labour for at least 5 hours and my son had the umbilical cord round his neck strangling him on every contraction.

Anything else?

The Edith Dare ward is awful, some of the staff are good, most are not, no help at all, expecting you to care for your child when you are full of pipes and can hardly move, some of them took a dim view of my other half when he changed and fed our son, seeing it as a womens job that I should be doing, not him.

The ward was not very clean , there was no entertainment of any kind in the room, they moved people from room to room with no warning and without telling relatives.

There was no way of sleeping at all, the ward was always noisy with nurses crashing about, turning the lights on and off and chatting loudly all night.