"My maternity experience"

After reading other birth trauma stories, its inspired me to tell my story. I’m a health professional, and was having my second baby. Unfortunately my first birth experience was not great, and that was at KEMH in 2022. I was hopeful OPH would be less stressful. 

Originally I applied for the family birth centre at KEMH however they said I was too complicated to birth there. I was sent to OPH. Unfortunately I didn’t have a great experience at Outpatients, MAU, labour or ward. The handover/communication between all services and even within the service more often then not required me to recall ‘why I was there’. I felt like staff did not read my notes, or my history. I was saw a different midwife, doctor. Very little consistency in the services provided. I did not feel comfortable that the service would be able to care for me adequately. And that ended up true when I had a hypertensive crisis and ended up as a Priority 1 transfer to KEMH with 2 code blue medical emergencies. 

On reflection, my family members and I recall how ‘lucky’ I was to survive. However I remember a question being raised early in my pregnancy, was I suitable to birth at OPH? Therefore should it have been allowed? 

Additionally to this I felt there was a lack of adequate nurse and lactation consultant staffing, poor facilities, too many visitors in one of the shared room guests (7 for 12 hours!) which did not lead to the best care, in fact more than likely caused the event in my opinion. 

Additionally I felt the food was gross, and lack of sandwiches or other options was disappointing. 

During my labour, which this time was much faster, I was placed in weird position and hence had trouble pushing. 

I think it would be great to see a better service offered to mums and babies, that instills confidence in the parents that the service is focused on your care. Overall very disappointed at the care experience.