Conditions that threaten women’s lives in childbirth & pregnancy

And for me this whole period seemed to go for a really long period of time. It felt like hours, that this was going on and they were, you know, so many people around me trying to do stuff, take blood pressure, put needles in, compress, they were doing compressions on the outside, compressions on the inside and then all of a sudden it kind of stopped and they were like, “Okay she’s stable.” I think that was obviously after the blood. I must have had a couple. I think I had two units of blood and they’d gone in and my blood pressure was back to normal. They’d stemmed the bleeding and it was like, right, the consultant, he was very sweet actually. He took my hand, and he said, “You’re going to be okay. You don’t need to worry. You’re going to be fine.” And I think he did the same to my husband actually. My husband was a bit of a wreck and then one by one, people started to leave the room and then there was just my midwife and I think two other people just kind of observing my stats and making sure I was okay. And what clothes would you like to put your son in? 

And really odd things like we lost, and it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things, but my baby stuff that I’d packed for her to wear, just disappeared somewhere, because like my bag had gone God knows where in the whole process, and so the little outfits that I got for her, just gone. That was actually the thing that upset me the most because I got these photos of her from the baby unit dressed in some strange clothes and I thought but I picked out these outfits where have they gone? And of course nobody knows because it’s all been so chaotic. But it was like, they were for my child, you know she’s wearing this strange clothing that I haven’t chosen. And it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter, because she’s being looked after but I still to this day think where the hell did those things go you know, because it was just something that I’d planned for and it just wasn’t there, you know? And I think that was the thing that, you know, you can’t control everything, that’s the biggest thing about giving birth, but certain things you’ve planned for and then when that’s taken away from you, it’s like suddenly that little thing becomes so big to you, you know, because even when you get a picture she’s wearing some bizarre clothing that you haven’t chosen for her, you know, I mean it just, it was like an added insult you know, after what had happened. And you know, I was still, I still couldn’t to this day understand somehow somebody couldn’t have said, “Oh it’s really important. That the things that this Mother’s chosen actually end up with her baby, because if I hadn’t have been ill that’s what would have happened I would have been able to dress her and you know, it just didn’t happen, and it’s almost those little things become enormous emotionally, you know, when you just try to hang onto something that’s familiar, you know, and the child that you haven’t even met properly yet isn’t even wearing the clothes that you’ve chosen for it, you know. I think that was really, really odd because that was the thing that you know, sparked me off of, how little control I had over the situation. 

I mean I suppose my over-riding feeling was afterwards that there’s always got to be a balance of the medical care and the fact that you’re also you know, a new Mum, that I understood completely that their priority was, you know, I had nearly died, and their priority was to work out what the long term impact of that was. I understood that from a clinical point of view. But I did feel that there was this kind of gulf in understanding of, as well as being a patient with these medical needs, I was also a new Mum and so I had, you know, you know, even the tedious things like, you know, wanting to still try and be able to breastfeed. I had to push for that, to say can somebody get me a machine? Can somebody show me how to do this? You know… and because I’m fairly bolshie that did happen. But again, had I been even more unwell or not as bolshie, I don’t know whether it would have done. Now it still didn’t work out for me, but in other circumstances it would, it could work out for somebody. So it’s those things you shouldn’t really have to fight about they should be part of the package that says as well as these clinical medical needs, there are also these things that you would normally be doing about you know, almost the midwifery things. You know, they kind of went out the window. 

I don’t think so really. I really don’t think so. I was very happy with the way I was treated. I think had I been in a general ward in the post natal with six other women in a bay I would probably feel very differently. I think I was very, very fortunate to have had a private room. And I felt for me that was important to allow me the space to recover. So if I did want to have a weep, and I think I’m fairly certain now that I must have wept that first night for half the night. Looking back I’m fairly certainly I did. And I don’t know if I would have felt able to do that in a ward full of other women and I think that was very important for me to grieve the labour that I didn’t have, if that makes sense. Although I had a great labour. It was very quick, it was over and done with. I wouldn’t say the pain was unbearable. You know, all of that, it didn’t go as I imagined. For the end I think you have to grieve. You have to go through that process of getting over that. And I think the private room sort of allowed me to do that in the first 24, 48 hours because I was in there two nights and I managed. I was luckily enough I kicked off, they tried to kick me out the second night and I kicked off because the only reason, one of the reasons I’d made the decision to stay was on the condition I could keep in the room. And then at 8 o’clock that night they tried to move me out. Luckily I kept it. If that had happened if I’d been in a general ward I think I probably would have felt very differently and how the care, how I would have liked the care to have changed was if women are having these experiences that are traumatic then they should be afforded the privacy to recover in peace really. But obviously constraints, medical, you know, funding constraints don’t always make that possible, but it’s nice to put that down as a wish.