"Maternity and birth"

I had a terrible experience with maternity from my first appointment. I was initially told I was in the midwife program, however then put into shared care, despite not having a GP at the time and having it never mentioned at all. This was changed after a long phone call. Then, not once did I have the same midwife twice, despite being told this would happen nearly every appointment.

Then the birth. Long story short, I was in labour for 48 hours which included being sent home and then induced with the drip (took 36 hours to get the epidural I had requested from the beginning). My blood pressure was high, so was checked what seemed like every 5 minutes. At no time did they explain why this might be happening or what they were doing.

I luckily had a close friend who is a midwife in with us so they explained everything they were doing. I was finally told I would be having a Caesarean (which was fine with me). Only when they got my baby out, with me half-conscious from exhaustion, did they realise they were posterior. Every single time they checked my stomach to see which way the baby was facing - they said I think it’s this way. 

I then went to recovery, where I was told by the nurse that they had mistimed my pain management and that I would feel my caesarean cut for a while.

It took hours for them to give me enough medication for the excruciating pain to dull. After hours in recovery (without spouse and baby), a doctor I had never met burst into my room, pulled up my gown and pressed hard in my stomach to do the checks. I screamed and said stop and pushed their hands away. This doctor hit my hands away and went to do it again and I ended up in a full-blown panic attack. A nurse finally told them to get my spouse and baby and my blood pressure dropped enough for me to go to my room.

After going home for a night, I was readmitted due to blood pressure (fair) which, I believe, then took 3 days for them to look at my maternity records to see it was on the high end my whole pregnancy and that I was fine.

It has since caused me long term mental health issues.