Huh? I left feeling puzzled and concerned.
At my subsequent appointment with a hospital medical doctor, I raised the situation of the non-anaesthetist – “are you really telling me there’s a possibility there will not be any person to administer an epidural?” – and waited for her reassuring response.
“Oh,” she mentioned. “The problem’s not with the anaesthetists. It will probably be the case that there will not be a midwife close to.”
HUH? Come yet again? No midwife?
“Yeah, specially if you give birth in the wee small hrs of the morning, or at the weekend, there may not be any midwives to assist you.”
Forgive me if I’m becoming stupid, but aren’t midwives the only men and women that can actually supply infants? If there are not any around, what am I supposed to do? I can hardly say to my unborn boy, ‘hang on in there, darling, can you just wait until Monday morning previous 10am so there are loads of employees about to help’.
Knowing my luck I will go into labour on a Sunday morning at 4am, right when the hospital is at its most understaffed.
Immediate ideas of lying in hospital corridors becoming unattended to, in agony, filled my thoughts. Significantly, I asked, am I going to be left alone in a hospital corridor till a midwife turns up?
“Properly, in situations the place there are not enough midwives, we generally wait right up until the female is 8cm dilated, then assign a midwife,” she said, all matter of fact.
The cervix only requirements to go to 10cm before dilation is total. So I’m waiting in a corridor, in discomfort, with out a midwife, and with out an epidural, for probably hours and hours – days, even – ahead of the really ultimate phases of birth, when someone finally comes along who’ve I have in no way met ahead of, and delivers the infant?
The doctor just smiled and shrugged this situation off. But she gave me no convincing cause to feel otherwise. My birth previously sounds like a nightmare and it truly is nonetheless two months away.
But it appears I am not the only one particular. Nowadays, hospital chiefs have been accused of “burying their heads in the sand” in excess of midwife shortages.
Figures recommend that a quarter of NHS Trusts had not assessed their workforce wants for at least four many years. Eighty per cent of the 99 trusts responding to a Freedom of Info request by BBC Radio 4′s Woman’s Hour even now had vacancies in funded midwife positions.
This is despite births in England increasing by a quarter in the previous decade.
How is it, in this day and age, in the 21st century, in the West, the midwives shortage is acceptable? It is not. It is appalling.
And how dare hospital physicians place the worry of God into me so early on into my pregnancy? Like I say, I’ve been pretty relaxed about most items so far. But this will take the biscuit.
Dr Dan Poulter, responding to the midwives shortage story right now, said the NHS is a “protected location to give birth, with ladies reporting large ranges of believe in and self-confidence in workers”.
Properly I misplaced all self-assurance in this certain hospital and its workers. It might be ‘normal’, even boring, to them that births are not constantly as you picture them – with personnel shortages an daily truth of existence. To them, I am just an additional statistic. But to me, this is my initial little one. I want to make sure I get basic, normal care.
Needless to say, I transferred hospitals and am now at University University London Hospital a teaching institution that already appears a million miles ahead of the one I came from.
When I raised the problem of no anaesthetists or midwives at UCLH, a physician merely laughed. “No, you don’t want to fret about that here.” Phew.
But how can a single hospital be so different in support to another that is only a handful of miles down the road? 1000′s of ladies threat receiving inadequate therapy due to the fact they never know there are other alternatives out there. So, girls, when the time comes – feel free to store close to.
And as for the Government? We need yet another 4,800 midwives in England, in accordance to the Royal University of Midwives. Which is not a huge quantity, in the grand scheme of items. And yet a lack of midwives is a recipe for significant disaster. The females of Britain deserve better.
Are you pregnant? What type of support have you had from your NHS hospital? Are you worried about the midwives shortage? Have you been advised to put together for underneath-staffed labour wards? Join the debate on Twitter @louisapeacock and @teleWonderWomen
Midwives shortage? You bet, my hospital advised me there could not be a midwife on duty when I give birth
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