"Regional patient birthing experience"

I was sent to KEMH to give birth due to being high risk. During labour and aftercare, I found the midwives and doctors were excellent. Attentive, kind, diligent and very professional. This is not a comment on their ability or performance. Unfortunately, I believe they can only do so much with the resources it seems they are provided with and my birth experience ended up causing myself and my spouse some severe trauma that has led to issues with breastfeeding and bonding with my baby due to our experience at KEMH.

- During labour, I felt there were no comfortable chairs for my spouse to sit in, considering I was labouring for around over 12 hours, I believe it’s not good enough, I wouldn't expect anyone else to sit in a horrible, hard chair for 12 hours in any other setting.

- I found there was no option for my spouse to stay with me overnight. After not sleeping for over 24hours and then not having a support partner stay with me, especially being over a thousand kilometres from our home is frankly not good enough in my opinion. I feel it is extremely traumatising for a first time mum to be left on their own with a screaming baby without any support from their partner, not to mention how hard it was for my spouse to leave me and our baby knowing they couldn't help. I believe many other hospitals provide a rollaway bed for partners so they can stay and help. It seemed to me the midwives were understaffed and were only able to help occasionally so I was left crying, in pain, having not slept of over 36 hours with a screaming baby before my spouse was allowed back. Based on my experience, this policy needs to change.

- I recall I was unable to use many of the resources because the equipment was either broken (ECG machines) or they didn't have the parts (wireless monitoring devices) making it hard to monitor the baby and I believe forcing me to deliver on my back resulting in an episiotomy.

- I believe expecting a 40 week pregnant woman with severe back pain to walk hundreds of meters to attend an essential physio appointment is deplorable. In my opinion, parking needs to be made available for staff and patients closer to the entrance. I was by myself in Perth and found public transport wasn't an option.

My suggestions based on my experience:

- fix the parking issue

- better equip your hospital with resources so your staff can do their jobs without worrying about things failing.

- create a better policy for partners and allow them to stay and help, I feel this may even alleviate the pressure on midwives during aftercare and help families bond. There are a lot of women who come from remote and regional communities who would be too afraid to speak up and I believe you are causing some severe mental health issues by seemingly isolating them from their families in one of the hardest times of their lives.

- put come comfortable chairs in the labour wards, I feel it’s not that hard or expensive.

Once again, I cannot commend the staff involved in my care enough for their caring and attentiveness in such a hard time. I believe they are doing an amazing job and deserve more recognition to be paid much more than they do.