"Mistreated and poor conduct"

I am writing this story as a witness for the traumatic experience my sister had with Armadale Hospital maternity midwife staff recently. She was induced on the first night. Her partner was forced to leave when visiting hours finished (as she wasn’t in the labour ward apparently – that’s apparently the policy). Her waters then broke at 11pm and minor contractions started. She then was given a shot of morphine in her leg without choice or consent I believe causing her labour to stop! Nothing happened all night. In the morning she was assessed and had another gel put in to try again for inducing. Time went on and in the afternoon she was moved to the labour ward to bring labour on through the drip. About 2 hours later I was called up to be her second support person. About an hour after I went up she had an epidural inserted, which fell out/stopped working an hour later (they didn’t know this until they checked later).

Late that night her partner went for a sleep and I took over. A couple of hours went by and her contractions got stronger and closer together. I then started waking the partner up to be awake and support the birth of his own child, however I got in trouble by the midwife every time I tried to wake him and was told to leave him and let him sleep. Meanwhile my sister was distressed because of it. Luckily the last night I didn’t care or listen to the midwife and finally woke him up as their child was born 50 minutes later. During her pushing time the baby got stuck and the midwives then called code blue and had to pull/force the baby out. Midwives were everywhere trying to keep my sister and partner calm as their baby wasn’t crying. Their baby was resuscitated and after several minutes went by the baby finally cried giving me and our dad relief. My sister lost a lot of blood and was rushed to theatre, unaware of what was going on. Dad and I went to see the baby in the nursery as that’s where they were taken, only to see their baby extremely bruised with a possible broken arm from the way they were delivered. After my sister had surgery she was then placed in intensive care for a minimum 12-24 hours. Our mum, whom is my sister’s next of kin, wasn’t contacted about any of it! The following day, everything was fine until my sister was back in maternity.

My sister went to go and feed the baby in the nursery and was told otherwise, as her baby was sleeping and not to disturb them. She wasn’t even allowed to hold her baby. She decided to stop breastfeeding for personal reasons and felt she was disrespected and guilted for her decision. Later that afternoon/night when family were visiting, another midwife had taken over her care. She was all nice to start off with until we weren't around. I believe they then treated my sister with a lot of disrespect and appeared quite rude. While we were all still there, they were informing another relative (from his side) how to do the child’s bottles and not telling my sister anything and seemed to completely ignore my sister! When asked if they could teach her to bath the baby their response was, how hard can it be? My sister is a first time mum, you tell me?!

Discharging - while waiting to be discharged, Mum and I were getting everything prepared for my sister’s little family to go home. The midwife who was present at the time (unsure of their name), in my opinion was quite rude towards myself and my mum. Then they realised the baby hadn’t had their needles either.

I could go on and on, but in the end we are not very happy. I would not recommend this hospital to anyone. I feel we are all just lucky my sister and her newborn survived.