"Depends on your luck"

I gave birth twice at KCH- first time was an excellent experience with very attentive midwives and loads of junior doctors came to attend me given some level of complications ( both baby and I caught an infection in hospital though so baby ended up being n distress). Despite the infection, I felt the service was effective and staffs were very sympathetic to my needs and feelings.

Second time round was horrific- I had an induction and had to endure 16 hours of heavy contractions without any doctor or midwife wanting to examine my dilation/ purely because they said their procedure is not to recommend examination until 24 hrs after induction. I had been begging them to examine me but they didn’t do it until 22nd hour. I ended up only getting epidural in the last hour of my labour and by then it was impossible to sit still to receive the epidural which could be more dangerous for the woman. I felt helpless and felt my feelings were not respected:

Then when it came to hospital discharge- there was no doctor on the whole ward on the weekend but one junior dr who got called to several different wards on the same day. All the women started to self discharge themselves without being seen by a doctor because of the wait.

It goes to show how stretched the NHS system is....