"I felt very confident in the care I was receiving"

I was physically sick for the first time in my pregnancy at 17 weeks and then developed a really sore stomach and back ache on the right hand side of my body. I tried walking off the pain but it became worse and I also became faint.

My husband rang my midwife team as we thought we should as a first point of call and had to leave a message. I was feeling awful and so he rang the birthing centre (probably not the best thing to do but we were worried and had not had a response from the midwife team) and they said to go to A&E.

We arrived at St. Georges A&E and when seen by the clinicians from a final year student nurse who gave me an initial saline injection when I was feeling at my worst to the consultant who checked the junior doctors diagnosis when I was feeling much better. I felt very confident in the care I was receiving. I was looked in on by a number of clinicians and kept up to date as to what was going on frequently. I was feeling much better by the time the consultant came to check on me.

I was still glad we had made it to A&E but felt somewhat guilty that I had wasted the clinicians time. I would like to highlight that never at any time was I made to feel like I had wasted anyone's time despite being fine on check out.

I would have preferred to have not bothered A&E but have seen a midwife as we originally thought we might be able to do and if they had thought it was serious then been sent to the A&E department. This is maybe something the NHS needs to consider rather than Wandsworth NHS alone.