"My caesarean section experience under COVID protocols"

To the Medical Board for Eastern Health,

Regarding my experience as a patient at Box Hill Hospital recently. I begin by celebrating the excellent medical staff I had the opportunity to meet and good fortune to be cared for before, during and after my elective Caesarean section this year.

I follow on to say, however, that my only other feedback regarding my experience, is far less positive, and pertains only to this single point: the brevity with which I, and my newborn, were cared for.

The decision by the board to reduce the number of nights’ stay following a caesarean birth, which I have reason to believe is not supported by the nursing staff working ‘on the ground’, to be, in my opinion, misjudged, misdirected and I believe a dangerous expedient with negative long term effects.

I wish to extrapolate this into three points.

Firstly, observing, and agreeing, on the whole, to most precautions taken by the hospital and wider society against the spread of COVID, I am of the firm opinion that in this case, the cure is worse than the condition, insofar as penalising post-operation mothers and infants with a day’s worth of care to have no medical justification for ‘stopping the spread’.

Especially, observing all the conventional precautions, (which my partner and nursing staff vigilantly did while I was under their care), in my opinion, why should a regular length of stay have heightened the risk of my contracting or transmitting the disease?

No explanation, let alone information, was provided to my partner or myself at any time while I was an outpatient or inpatient at the hospital in regards to this.

Secondly, I felt it was my sheer luck to have been practised at giving a caesarean birth three times before my recent experience, which I believe nullified some of those natural anxieties concomitant with undergoing this major surgical operation, with the introduction to motherhood, and with ignorance of what degree of immobilising pain might be expected post-surgery.

Add to this, the anxiety of being discharged from hospital 48 hours, and I believe in known cases, within 48 hours of incision, and I can only imagine the distress other women must be experiencing with this unprecedented decision. It is, in the most charitable estimation, in my opinion, lunatic; and in any estimation, I believe medically negligent.

Thirdly, able to provide anecdotal evidence from a friend (who wishes to remain anonymous), I am able to prove in practical terms how the board’s decision has already caused a multiplication of added and possibly avoidable medical issues and mental anxieties for mothers and their newborns.

This friend, who underwent her first caesarean section at another Eastern Health service at the end of last year, and discharged within 48 hours, was soon rushed back by ambulance (from her home in a rural location) with her newborn, who experienced serious respiratory delay to the point of turning blue, only five hours after arriving home—and within 48 hours of being born.

This friend and her newborn were required to stay overnight at the hospital again for observation, with her newborn in an incubator in NICU. I believe this ordeal could have been hugely abated, if not entirely avoided in my opinion, had they not been prematurely discharged.

I was fortunate enough to experience no such ordeal as my friend. And I believe unlike most women, I was also fortunate enough to continue recovering at a relative’s home, under their supervision and care as a qualified nurse. Few, I believe, are so lucky.

I know, had I not had this opportunity, and that I had been compelled to return straight home to my other three young children, I would have been mentally overwrought, I believe very possibly to the point of becoming a safety risk to myself and/or my children, having returned to this circumstance so soon after surgery.

What’s more, I believe this would be the natural, not the anomalous response.

I have every confidence, and every regret, to believe the data will corroborate the things I have here said, in the coming months and years, I believe adding to already overstrained mental health providers, ambulance services, DHHS, worthy not-for-profits and other family supports.

It is for these above reasons that I find the urgency to write this letter, to urge you to reverse your decision to reduce the night stay for women and newborns after a caesarean birth. If the predominant response to the two-night stay is silence, do not presume this means women are content with the decision.

Rather, I believe it is because they have been forced into a position that disempowers them with the mental or physical wherewithal to write a complaint like I am now able to do, considering my above-mentioned advantages.

The decision to reduce the nights’ stay, in my opinion, can in no way be considered a viable new standard of care.

Most sincerely.