"Lack of consent and communication"

My baby went to special care nursery and neither myself (mother) or the father were asked/told that they needed and then had an X-ray of their chest. We only found this out on day 6 when the paediatrician ordered an X-ray for an issue with my baby's wrist/nerves and we got sent down to X-rays, waited 20min only for them to tell us they had already had an X-ray at birth and they could use that rather than do another since my baby is so little and shouldn’t be exposed to the radiation again. If we hadn’t been sent down there I would have never known they had an X-ray? I would have thought consent from a parent was required for this. Also the lack of communication between hospital departments - why was the record/info not all in one place for the paediatrician to see?

- In the special care nursery, the lactation consultant came to help me with latching my baby. Without my consent and without communicating what they were doing and why they were doing it, they begun undressing my baby, to the point where my baby was extremely distressed - screaming, tense, and bright red. I asked why are you undressing them? The Lactation Consultant said Oh we don’t have to…But it was too late by that point. They then began shoving my baby’s head on my breast and forcing their neck/head toward the breast, all while they're screaming and distressed.

A midwife from special care then grabbed my breast without my consent and began squeezing the living daylights out of it. They did this again on the other breast and squeezed so hard they created a blood blister! At no point did anyone ask if they could touch me. By the end I was in tears and said I don’t think this is working, so they finally stopped without successfully getting baby to latch and suckle.

At no point did anyone explain what they were doing/how they were trying to achieve a latch, so even if they were successful I did not learn what to try again on my own. The whole experience was completely traumatic for a first time mum.

There was only one midwife called Hayley who witnessed the whole thing and who was very kind to me after - saying that not everyone tries that way and that when I was home and everything was quiet and calm, it would be different. She stood out to me and is probably why I persevered with breastfeeding after that awful experience. I was also lucky I had hired a private midwife, so once I was home she showed me the angle and technique to get baby to latch without breastfeeding pain and it changed my life. But I just think about how many other first time mums might have only had the awful hospital experience that I had!

- Another random thought about consent but in special care they tried to give my baby a dummy (they didn’t really take it) and I noticed other babies in there with dummies - but no one asked me if I wanted to give my baby a dummy? Seems small…but again, why are these decisions made without the parents? It makes me wonder what else happened in there that I don’t know about?

- After I had given birth, they rushed us out of the birthing suite so quickly! I had just laboured for 28 hours with no food and hardly any rest or sleep, and they barely waited for me to be able to walk after the epidural before they moved us to the post natal ward on the other side of the hospital, all while my baby was in special care in the birthing ward. To me the duty of care here felt completely lacking.

Once on the post natal ward there was no communication about what checks I needed to have, or when I could go to special care to see bub, we basically knew nothing. We’d had no sleep and had to travel to the other side of the hospital to see our baby, and then the midwives would come in at all hours of the day or night, like randomly at 2am, just to check my blood pressure. We never knew when someone might barge into the room so we got virtually no sleep. I just feel like someone could have said; “hey so every X hours we need to do your blood pressure and take your temperature and we will bring you pain relief” so we knew what was up?

Once we finally got our baby with us in the post natal ward, no one even mentioned that we couldn’t take them out of that ward like to the cafe or one of the outside seating areas - I happened to tell a midwife we were going to the cafe and they were horrified and said baby had to stay there, and I said well you might want to tell people that because how were we meant to know??

A lot of things in Bunbury were great, in particular midwives Hayley, Jess, Brinley and Narelle, but the after-birth care and communication was pretty awful.