"Extremely difficult birth made worse by care..."

I had a positive experience with the staff in maternity triage and the labour ward - although I had to be induced 6 weeks early and then have an emergency c-section due to pre-eclampsia, the staff were amazing, they talked me through everything and dealt with me at my most emotional and stressed, my baby was delivered safely and taken to the neonatal unit.

This is where the issues began, I was taken to HDU to recover - they were fantastic as well but I was only there for 1 night, I was then transferred to the post-labour ward which was awful.

I cannot begin to explain how horrific it is to be put on a ward surrounded by ladies who have their perfect, healthy, screaming new babies with them whilst my baby was in the NICU and could not see him. My blood pressure was already extremely high due to the pre-eclampsia and there was no chance it was going to reduce. I tried to explain this to the midwives during the 5 days they kept me on that ward with women coming and going with their screaming babies. I was not sleeping, I was highly stressed and I was devastated that my baby was not with me. I kept explaining that my blood pressure would not reduce if I was forced to stay there. They still would not move me. In the end we had to borrow money from family to pay for an amenity room so I could be alone - they did not need to make us pay as all the rooms were empty that night so that was an added bit of cruelty.

As soon as I spent 1 night in that room my blood pressure came down and I could be discharged - surprise surprise!

I appreciate the midwives are exceptionally busy but there was no thought or care to the cruelty that was being inflicted on someone without their baby with them. I became more frustrated when I read a sign in the waiting room which stated that someone had complained about this before and the ward claimed they had improved this by ensuring side rooms were available for mothers without their babies! A blatant lie!

I am sure that this experience has added to my continued feelings of stress and potential depression/PTSD and I am devastated that this has completely marred my experience of an otherwise wonderful staff team.