Care while pregnant versus postnatal care

Wow, this thread makes for hard reading. I had my son in Wales and I might has well have had him in heaven compared to these stories. I ended up having an emergency section at about 2am so instead of putting me on the ward they kept me in an observation room in L&D for the first 36 hours after. They brought me tea and toast from the staff kitchen, which I promptly vomitted, and the last midwife I'd had through labour and the birth stayed with me to chat with me about how I was and would have helped to establish feeding if it had been necessary. My husband was allowed stay until I told him to leave and get some sleep.

I had a team of unallocated midwives sitting right outside my door and they did things like picking S up and giving him to me and the first few nappy changes, as for the first few hours I had very, very little arm movement from the spinal block. I didn't need to call them, if they heard S start to stir they just came in. After the second time he woke up, after I fed him I mentioned to the midwife that came in to see how we were doing that I didn't feel quite ready to let him go, so she made him up a 'nest' in the bed next to me and helped me position myself safely with him. I was too wired to go back to sleep and instead had an amazing morning watching the dawn over the bay and as it was the middle of Diwali there were several fireworks displays happening at a time all down along the Gower coast. It was completely magical. Later that day both of the other midwives who had been 'mine' throughout my long labour came in to visit with me and celebrate S's arrival and they brought me lots of extra freebie stuff. On the L&D ward there was no such thing as visiting times so while my husband was obviously allowed be there when he wanted, they had no problem with my parents coming in whenever (though the midwives did tell me that they'd pretend to enforce strict limits if I was sick of visitors). The food was typical hospital food but I'd packed snacks and my husband and parents brought me in lots of things. The midwives at the station usually asked if I wanted a cup of tea and a biscuit if they were making one. The doctors, right down to the anesthesiologist, all came in to get my feedback on how I felt everything had gone and if I had any comments or complaints. I was offered counselling if I needed it due to the traumatic nature of the birth. I was routinely offered painkillers, IIRC Tramadol and paracetamol every 4 hours and ibuprofen/difene every alternate 4 hours. I took very little of them, as I was a bit paranoid about breastfeeding and medication but I was told that as a BFI hospital all painkillers they offered would be safe for breastfeeding.

On the evening of S's second day I was moved to the postnatal ward which was less ideal than my lovely bubble in L&D but nothing to complain about. There were 4 beds in the room and all of the other women in there had also had some sort of medicalised birth, so we were checked on regularly. I had some constipation so one of the midwives brought me Peppermint oil which I needed a few times to get going and she was very sympathetic with how uncomfortable it was for me and was quite cheery in a lovely way once I finally did go. (Which in retrospect does sound a little weird, having a stranger cheerlead you having a poo ) That night I woke up completely soaked in sweat and needed the sheets changed. I went and found a nurse and apologised but she just quickly whipped out new sheets and changed the bed and was lovely about it. The next day they did all the checks on both of us, like paeds check and hearing test for S, a lactation consultant came to check S's latch and see if I wanted any advice on feeding, etc. They said they were happy to release us into the care of the community midwives if I wanted to go home or to keep us in another day or so if I preferred. I went home. The community midwives visited us the next morning and weighed S for the first time since immediately after his birth and visited us in the bedroom at home. They told me that anything under a 12.5% loss of weight was normal and even then they'd assess other factors like him being falsely large at birth due to me being on an IV in labour, before interferring with my feeding. He'd lost 9.5% which was smiles all around and as my milk had just come in since his last feed I was told he'd probably gain it back in no time. When they came again 2 days later he had and I partly put that down to not being made to stress about his weight in a way that seems common here.

Everything was just lovely and relaxed with the whole process and that's considering the fact that I didn't get to go to the lovely birthing centre I'd hoped for. Instead I was in the hospital that local mums online described as a comparitive cattle market. But everyone there was honestly fantastic and took so much time to go through everything with me and just be friendly. There are some things that were wonderful about my experience that were more dumb luck than the NHS Wales system, like the spectacular view from my window after S's birth and the super sweet way 'my lovely' is Welsh for 'person I'm presently talking to.' But all in all I look back on my 80 hour labour (including 2 hours of pushing) followed by a c-section and the days after S's birth as all part of a really excellent experience where I was trusted to make my own informed decisions, completely respected while being cosseted and protected when I needed it. And that is 100% down to a mixture of the wonderful personalities of every single HCP I dealt with alongside the decades of hard work organisations like the National Childbirth Trust has done in Britain, researching and campaigning for the best possible birth experiences for women and their babies.