"Post labour ward"

Mostly care has been excellent except for a few people. One instance was on the post labour ward on 13/11/17. I had complications post delivery and had been experiencing excruciating pain for which I was prescribed some morphine. After staff changeover, I spoke to the midwife to find out whether I would be able to get morphine again if the pain was to return. Their response was that I shouldn’t be on morphine anymore and should be weaning myself off it. When they brought my painkillers they brought dihydrocodeine which I didn’t want to take as I was not in severe pain at the time and I did not want it to delay me taking morphine if the pain was to come on again suddenly as it had done before but midwife ignored my concerns and forced me to take the dihydrocodeine. The midwife also refused to give the cup with the tablets in it for my husband to hold even though I was clearly struggling to sit up in the bed and I wasn’t able to hold a glass of water, hold the cup of tablets and swallow them on my own. I also did not want to take the ibuprofen on an empty stomach so I kept it aside to take later but they came back, saw it and took it away. Luckily I had brought some ibuprofen with me otherwise I would have been left without these painkillers. I was also having a blood transfusion and when I informed the midwife that it was finished and for the next one to be set up, it took about 2 hours before the next one was initiated, which was after 11pm, which delayed me getting some sleep as I was waiting for it to be changed. I also asked for some help with breastfeeding and the midwife said that they would send someone but they also commented that I should be topping up with formula. No-one came but I am disappointed that rather than help me to breastfeed I was told to use formula. I spoke to another member of staff and they suggested that I try expressing and when I asked the midwife about this they just said no you shouldn’t be expressing without giving an explanation. The midwife came to administer my clexane injection and when I said that I didn’t have the injection the previous night (I didn’t have it because I was not informed about needing it) they commented ‘I’m not even going to ask why you didn’t have it’ and when they administered it, it caused a great deal of pain.

On 14/11/17 in the evening a member of staff brought round the clexane and just handed it to me. I wasn’t sure what to do with it and their response was ‘well I’m not going to administer it for you’. They then just told me to pinch my stomach and administer it and I found it quite painful. I later had to look up online how to administer it and found out that the plunger should be pressed down slowly to minimise pain (I had pressed it down quickly) and it should be injected at least 5cm from the belly button. Surely the staff should be explaining how to administer this and be sure that the patient is doing it correctly. This lack of information led to unnecessary pain for me and I could have potentially administered it in the wrong site.