Firetop

I’ve just got home for a quick power nap on day two of the ongoing labour saga. On Sunday morning at 11am Suzie_Q’s waters broke and we were advised by the midwife (on the telephone) to head over to the antenatal day centre immediately. At the hospital two very friendly midwives wired Sue’s belly up to the monitor to track the baby’s heart beat and any uterine contractions, they also confirmed upon examination that the waters had indeed gone. Unfortunately baby’s head is too high and not yet engaged, which carries a risk of a prolapsed umbilical cord (cord delivered before baby), so Suzie_Q was told to stay in by the registrar (who had performed another examination). By 4pm they found a bed on the main ward and midwife number three took us over there.

Next Sue was handed to midwife number four who thought there was another complication (involving baby pooh! - lovely) and they said they’d need to induce immediately. Two hours later midwife number five took Suzie_Q to the delivery suite in a wheel chair where midwife number six (the battle-axe!) re-examined Sue, told her she wasn’t in labour and doubted the waters had gone. She spoke to us both like idiots, explaining in simple condescending language what Braxton Hicks contractions were (as if we wouldn’t know after twenty hours of NCT lessons). After man-handling Sue quite roughly, upsetting her in the process after a very long day, a doctor finally arrived to perform an ultrasound scan.

The new doctor confirmed what all five previous mid-wives had said but removed the baby pooh scenario - this lowered the inducement priority and just meant Suzie_Q staying in over night. Upon hand over to mid-wife number seven (a lovely women who ran our tour there) Sue was exhausted, she didn’t want to go to the ward full of crying babies (can’t blame her) so took the private room on the ward (at a cost but it’s worth it for sleep). After a nice cup of tea and some toast from the mid-wife I went home to get some sleep around 10pm.

This morning - Monday, I arrived at 11am to discover that doctor number two (who came early) wanted to induce immediately because labour wasn’t coming quickly enough (although technically they will wait up to 72 hours after waters have broken). Midwife number eight was very friendly and it has just been a day of waiting, watching Wimbledon’s crappy archive footage on TV and letting Sue sleep - that and walking sideways up stairs a lot together. At 4:30pm registrar number two appeared to say that the delivery suite was heaving with emergencies and that it would be some hours yet. Hence I took the chance to come home, blog, sleep an hour and eat a nice high calorie curry in case it’s a long night!

All in all everybody at East Surrey (except one stressed person) has been very friendly so far. It is quite exhausting explaining over and over again to person after person what has happened so far – none of them want to read the pink papers we carry around. I detected a bit of hostility between the delivery ward mid-wives and those on antenatal duties, as if they kept having their time wasted. However, it wasn’t pleasant to be caught in the middle of that, if the system is flawed we should have met mid-wife number six and the doctor as soon as we arrived to get the right decision from the outset.

Technorati Tags: babies, baby delivery, east surrey, hospitals, maternity, antenatal, nct, child birth

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