"Humiliating, terrifying"

What I liked

I came to this hospital to give birth and have to say that the whole experience has left me terrified of giving birth again. I was given an induction when I was 11 days overdue, but was appalled when I told, around 30 hours through the labour, that due to understaffing on the delivery ward, there were no midwives available to deliver my baby, so they just had to leave me to labour as I was. I was also told I was allowed no more pain medication as I had had the most I could have in that time period.

While this is fair enough, they said that I could have something to speed up the labour, but that this would make contractions even more painful and again, I could have no pain relief, and I would still not be taken to the delivery ward. I ended up being in labour for 58 and a half hours, which I find shocking, as they were the ones that arranged for the induction - so surely they should have committed to delivering the baby within the 36 hour timescales that I was promised when discussing an induction with the midwife.

This completely wrecked the experience of giving birth and while the staff were good at maintaining dignity where possible, they were incredibly unsympathetic to the situation, as they obviously see people in that condition every day. I understand that understaffing is not the nurses' fault, but am shocked that the understaffing situation appears to be so bad that I had a labour over four times the length of the average first-time mother, and was left in incredible pain for most of this process.

What could be improved

The understaffing situation, as it appears to have disgusting consequences!