"Positive birth, then separated from baby"

I recently gave birth at the Albany hospital and had a mixed experienced looking back on it.

I achieved a very positive water birth with one amazing midwife and my partner. My midwife made every effort to encourage me to have less interventions as this was what I hoped for, I am really grateful for that now! I gave birth with music, a dimmed room, minimal staff, gas and sterile water injections, lots of hot water in the shower and bath really helped as pain relief as well. I was the first one to touch my baby when I lifted them out of the water and my partner got to announce the gender and cut the cord while still in the bath. The hypnobirthing classes really gave me confidence to ask for the birth that I would love.

After the birth I had a haemorrhage which was investigated via surgery, then ended up in HDU for 30 hours for a bakari balloon and some monitoring. My baby was in maternity with my partner and I saw them every few hours to feed as much as I could. I was given a lot of strong antibiotics during this part for 48 hours, I’m not sure how consent works for this as I couldn’t remember the discussion, but I think it was given prophylactically. (After returning home I developed oral thrush from antibiotics which was quite horrible while teary and recovering from a birth, mine and baby’s digestion was also affected).

I am extremely grateful the midwives and staff could accommodate 3/24 feeds with my beautiful new baby as I really wanted to establish breastfeeding, and they also mentioned this might be hard to do with a large PPH. They helped with latch, expressing colostrum, using up my frozen colostrum to give me a break, which were all so great.

I am saddened by the fact that I was separated from my baby and missed key bonding over the first 30 hours or so. As I had monitoring on, I couldn’t move my arms much and this made cuddling and feeding very tricky. It was abit confusing that I was made to be in HDU as the balloon wasn’t checked until the next day, and the monitoring - while my heart went up to 140 a few times, was not acted upon when out of range, seeming kind of pointless. I would have loved it if this could have been managed on maternity ward so that I didn’t feel I missed out meeting my baby properly. My family also got to meet my baby on the ward without me there, which is also abit sad! In the HDU room I couldn’t have a wash at all either which was horrible after giving birth!

Another aspect I would change for my next birth would be to pre-emptively discuss the placenta, no conversation was had with me after birth about whether I may like to keep or take this home to plant it ... I feel it wasn’t honoured at all as the organ that created a beautiful healthy baby!

Once on maternity ward, I had amazing experiences with the midwives all being very supportive to help me practice feeding, they checked in lots overnight and they also offered to watch my baby a few times in the early hours so that I could have a tiny sleep. I was very grateful for this as a new Mum who didn’t know how to settle the baby to sleep properly!! There was some conflicting advice but I think it just gave me lots of perspectives so that I could choose the best options for us. The single rooms offer a great set up with bathroom, sink and change space. There was very cute blankets and baby others on offer to use.

I am extremely grateful for the aspects of my care that went well and that now post partum me and baby are very healthy and doing well thanks to my body and the teams support.

Looking back on the experience there are a few things I would advocate harder for next time:

- seek a GPO that seems more comfortable / on board with physiological third stage

- better high energy snacks on offer in the birth suite that don’t need chewing

- discuss placenta - what happens to this?

- discuss prophylactic antibiotics beforehand, from my experience I would avoid if possible!

- for monitoring to be done on maternity if possible

- would love the policy re bakari balloons to change to allow mums to be on maternity

- as a new mum, information on the fourth trimester like ways to settle baby, get them to sleep would be helpful for future mums!

- midwives offering to watch babies for periods overnight are sooo so great as much as they are able to offer this.

- birth certificate not to be given to a drowsy mum post surgery as this was lost, would be more helpful to be given before leaving hospital

I would love to thank the maternity team for helping us with this tricky post birth situation and making the best of it with us.