Share review of Bassetlaw District General Hospital

Bassetlaw District General Hospital 2017-07-25 Person 1 5 0

It was a shame that I had such great care on the labour ward, only to be let down and have the total opposite experience on the postnatal ward (A2). I was told by the labour ward my baby would need 12hrs of observations so we couldn't leave till 6pm, which we understood. Once the last check was performed we were ready to go, all packed up, car moved ready for collection and I had even been fully discharged. We were ready to leave and then one of the midwives says "Oh, I didn't realise this was your first child, you seem so relaxed, I need to see you breastfeed before you go." I then tried to wake my baby to feed but she was sleepy (I think from the diamorphine I had during labour), so at that moment was unable to be watched. I had no idea that was needed before I could leave, if I had been told 12 hours earlier, I could have shown them throughout the day. Even if my baby had fed at that point the midwife never returned to see and I never saw her again, I think she went home. I was then left unsure what to do. I tried to ask another midwife but she didn't know and had to check. Still no word so I asked her again later and she said they need to see me feed so I can't go home and I have to stay the night. I was gutted. My husband had to leave me, I was in pain and found it difficult to move as I had stitches, so I found it hard throughout the night to look after my baby on my own as the midwives did not help. Even though they were supposed to be watching me feed, the only time they came to me was when I pressed the buzzer to try and get them to watch/help me feed her as she wasn't staying on long so I was manually expressing most of the time. The night staff gave me minimal help/advice and before that no one had done so. The night staff disappeared come morning and I had no idea if I could go or not. I didn't know if they had passed on what they had seen to the day staff or not or even if they were happy with what we could do. There were various shift changes during my stay and only a couple of midwives actually introduced themselves on the last change before I went home and finally filled my board in with my details and their names. Everyone else, I had no idea who they were and if/what they were handing over as no one seemed to know anything about me. I spent the morning trying to figure out if I could go, one midwife said yes after discharge. I said I had already been through everything but I was still made to wait a long time untill she was free to do the discharge. Once started she realised I was correct and everything had already been completed the day before. She said she would tell the community midwives not to visit me that day as they should visit the day after discharge and because I was down as being discharged the day before, a midwife was already scheduled to visit me. We had been home 20minutes and the midwife still visited us. We told her we had only just got back so she left and said we would get a visit the next day. The breast feeding team called me on day 5 post delivery(didn't hear from them before that), which is when I was told I should of been trying breast aswell as giving a specific amount of expressed bottle. I had been told by the childrens ward on day 3 to express and give that as my baby had lost weight. My milk had only just come in and my baby had started to suck properly so we were just getting into it but I was told to express, which was fine. But as I wasn't told to keep trying breast also, by the time I found out, my baby had forgotten how to take breast as the bottle was so easy for her. I was gutted but kept trying my baby on the breast and contacted the breast feeding team for advice but they took 2 days to respond and even then they wanted to refer me and didn't give advice. Overall I had a horrible and upsetting experience with all the postnatal services and struggled as a new mother. Poor services and support.