"Care provided (or lack of) after the birth of our first."

Anglis Hospital Ferntree Gully.

I want to start off by saying that the midwives we had throughout the labour were absolutely amazing and I felt well looked after and informed the entire labour. The problems started soon after I had our beautiful baby in my arms.

From that point we were pretty much left alone in the birthing suite for over 12 hours. That’s right, we had our bubba at 1.51am and didn’t get moved to the postnatal ward until around 2pm that afternoon. As this was our first, we had very limited knowledge on what we were meant to do, however I did want to get my baby feeding straight away which they did thankfully.

No one actually did any obs at all in the birthing suite after the initial obs. No one let us know what we needed to do next, we were left alone. I got my baby to feed again without help but my baby attached wrong and damaged my nipple.

We then had a midwife come in to try and show us how to feed, but only a few minutes into showing us, our bubba would be quickly dropped on my tummy because there was an assistance button pressed and they had to run out. This happened 3 times over the next 2 hours before my husband went out and expressed his concern (and anger by that stage) that we were not receiving the care we should be getting. This was also all happening while the grandparents were waiting in the hall to meet their new grandchild. I absolutely understand that emergencies take priority over showing a mum how to feed, however I should not have been in the birthing suite still at this point. It was by this stage 11am. This would all have been avoided if there had been more staff in the birthing suite. They were absolutely run off their feet to the point where breaks were being skipped and staff were physically and mentally drained. The lack of staff is having a direct and lasting impact on families especially on first time parents who do not know what to expect or what they are meant to do next.

I am absolutely baffled at why they are not allowed to call in more staff during these times or just have enough staff working for a ‘worst case scenario’. Thankfully once we were moved into the postnatal ward we were well looked after as they were all told of how neglected we had felt for the previous 12 hours. Although they were run off their feet also, we did get a lot more attention and our beautiful baby finally got their obs done.