"Brilliant maternity service, should have been..."

Can't fault the midwives I met at Kingston. i was induced early due to obstetric cholestasis and despite it being incredibly busy on the antenatal and labour wards, I was given world class treatment. In the run up to the birth the midwives were all fantastic too. When I became hyper stimulated by my propess ( very start of induction) they acted quickly to bring my baby's heart rate down and prevent escalating intervention. As it was so busy there was a lot of waiting around to be admitted to the labour ward as I was lower risk / not as far along as many of the other women being admitted so we did have 36 hours to wait. I was meant to go to the labour ward to have my waters artificially broken but actually during all that waiting my waters broke by themselves and I went into labour naturally which was great. As soon as that happened I got bumped up the list and on to labour ward within a couple of hours.

Labour was quite quick after that and the staff respected my request to wait until I could have an epidural before starting me on a hormone drip to speed up labour ( high risk pregnancy so they wouldn't let me wait as long as women in a normal labour). Had to wait a few hours for the epidural as it was a Saturday and only one anaesthetist available. Epidural was brilliant though and no pain even setting it up. Was continuously monitored throughout delivery and when baby arrived with chord wrapped tightly round her neck they called the crash team immediately and room was filled with people within seconds - and this is on an incredibly busy day. They revived my baby very quickly and all was well!

From my experience, if something was serious or urgent a midwife would be with you in a flash. If something was not urgent though, I.e you needed some milder pain relief, you would need to wait a while or ask for it a couple of times. I didn't mid this at all as could see they were having to prioritise care very carefully in terms of need, exactly as it should be.

My only criticisms, and these should be mentioned, are that input from doctors was very fleeting. This wouldn't matter in a low risk pregnancy but I saw several consultants in the run up to the birth and although two of them were brilliant and really took time to explain everything to me like and adult, one seemed to be on a totally different script and advocating a different protocol which confused and upset me. After the baby was born I was also discharged within 24 hours. She was born early and had signs of jaundice and we ended up having to be readmittes 2 days later due to her having lost too much weight. I understand the pressure on beds but I wish they had kept us in another day to make sure breast feeding was established, it might have avoided having to spend another three days in hospital later in the week. That said, the treatment I received on the children's ward was also wonderful. If I have more children in future i don't think I would want to give birth anywhere else