"Midwives must not rely on technology"

My daughter had a bad experience as we felt the midwives relied too much on technology and not at all on what the patient was telling them.

My daughter had started in labour the evening before. She was taken to the delivery suite, put on the monitor and told she was not in labour yet and had what they called ‘tightenings’.

She was 1cm dilated when taken to delivery and was left all night with hardly any attention. It was 2 1/2 hour at one point when she was not seen by anyone and even when she was, she was told that she was not a priority as the monitor did not register that she was having contractions only ‘tightenings’. She was made to feel that she was not coping with the pain she was in as well as she could be.

To cut a long story short she was examined at 10pm the previous evening and finally saw a doctor at around 9 15 am the next morning. The doctor declared that she was fully dilated (10cm) and baby's head was there and she should start pushing straight away. Even then she had problems as the doctor went away to tend to another patient leaving my daughter to be tended again by the midwife. The poor girl was pushing hard for 2 hours with no progress when at last the doctor came back again and wondered why she had not delivered yet. On examining her, the doctor said that something was stopping the baby. It turns out the cord was around the baby's shoulders and as fast as she was pushing she was getting nowhere she needed to be cut. Why did the midwife not notice?

She was obviously in labour and told she was not and the pains would get much worse because the monitor did not indicate otherwise. My daughter was petrified at the prospect.

I feel that what they did to her was disgusting seeing as this was her first child, she was only 34 weeks term and her waters had broken 6 days earlier.

I say if you want to be a midwife and work with mums to be then hats off to you but I feel you should not hide behind monitors and rely solely on technology.