"Importance of advocating"

I came in to KEMH late last year, in labour. I had developed a cold 2 days earlier and had been told to get a covid test which I did on but didn’t have the results back yet. So I was treated as covid positive until the staff managed to get my negative result confirmed. I understand that. No problem there.

I found the receiving clinician was fairly disrespectful upon my arrival - and despite not wanting to be hooked up to monitoring, they insisted they do this until the on-call midwife from the birthing centre arrived. Again, not ideal but fine. Except that I was having an intense contraction as they struggled to get the monitor on, and even though I asked them to stop (so I could get through the contraction) and my student midwife asked them to stop until it was finished, it seemed they ignored us both and carried on struggling to wrap it around me. In my opinion, if you are asked twice to stop, and you can tell someone is having a contraction - just stop! Fortunately my midwife arrived shortly after that, and the clinician disappeared for the rest of my story

The point of telling you this next part is to highlight how easy it is for the birth experience to take a negative turn. I believe the staff need to be trained and hold the mum’s and baby’s wellbeing at the forefront of their actions

It was almost the end of their shift when the junior clinician came in to do my stitches. I felt I knew this because they told me we had to be done in 40 minutes. I found they were incredibly rough and did not use enough anaesthetic. I was in agony and basically felt I was levitating out of the bed. I could not handle that pain - and given that I had just pushed around a 4kg baby out without pain relief - that is telling you something! In the end they said to me that my only options were to a) go upstairs to theatre for an epidural and have them sutured, meaning I would be separated from my baby and have to stay 12 hours afterwards or b) endure the pain they were inflicting. Neither were acceptable options to me.

My clever midwife happened to find a senior more experienced clinician in the corridor and they offered to try before resorting to the epidural option. Once they started, I didn’t feel a thing. A couple of sharp stings of anaesthetic and I was back to being able to enjoy my new baby who was starting the chest crawl/first feed.

Moral of that story - there are often other solutions. I believe just like in any business, you should escalate to your manager - not just go straight to the top. If my midwife had not found that more experienced registrar, I would have been devastated about having to go to surgery.

Based on my experience, ongoing training around birth trauma needs to occur. I believe it is very real and has ongoing implications for many women. As medical professionals, I feel it is paramount that you do everything possible to protect that experience, while of course keeping mum and baby healthy.