"Maternity Care"

When I was 37 weeks pregnant I was in an accident in Glasgow. I live in mid argyll and up until that point my care had all been with the Midwife team based in Lochgilphead who had been brilliant. 

After the accident we went to Paisley Maternity unit so that the baby could be checked as it had been quite a bad accident. In triage the midwifes and doctors were all lovely but they told me to return the next day for a scan. 

The following day I returned for a scan and the midwife who scanned me started to measure the baby. I told her that myself and my midwives had decided to stop measuring the baby as we knew it was a big baby(my first was also large) and there was nothing we could do about it. This was a considered and informed decision we had made. This midwife told me that she had to measure the baby even though I had told her that was not something that I wanted. However I did not object more as the way she explained it to me she would be in lots of trouble if she did not measure the baby. I now know that this is untrue and that she should have listened to my wishes. I was not there because I had a big baby I was there to receive reassurance after being in a car crash. Instead of feeling re assured the midwife then made me feel as though I was in a very dangerous situation because my baby was large. There was no consideration that I was away from my home, alone with no support and vulnerable as I had just been in an accident.

I then saw a registrar.  They told me that I would have to come to Paisley to have my baby. There was no sense of it being a conversation I was being told what to do. That I would have to have full monitoring in Labour and have an assisted delivery. They talked about manouvers they would do to get the baby out. I very much felt that I was being told what I had to do not being offered a choice. It was highly upsetting and offered exactly the opposite to the reassurance that I had arrived to receive. 

It was only after the brilliant care of a Dr called Andrew who told us that there was nothing to worry about that we were allowed to leave. And I gave birth at home in Tayvallich completely unassisted to a 5.15kg baby at 40+5 weeks. It was a wonderful birth with brilliant midwives Nicky and Brenda but I wonder why was I put through all the stress and made to doubt myself so much by those two members of staff. If i had followed their advice I would have been induced or had a c section 5 weeks earlier than my baby was ready to come. Their intervention made me constantly doubt myself and caused significant stress and upset at a time when I needed reassurance.