Midwifery care?

AIMS Journal, 2016, Vol 28 No 4

AIMS recently received the following letter...

I had my midwife appointment today and I feel so frustrated with the way she treated me.

We had to go over my birth plan and so I showed her the plan I did and she reacted as if I had done some sort of quick research online and have no idea what I am talking about.

She made a sarcastic comment when checking the baby’s heart rate, ‘Hey baby sounds like your mum has definitely figured out what she'd like to do with you!’ And she told me things like:

• not opting for induction after 41 weeks is just silly as the placenta is old and I am putting the baby at risk so she said, ‘we'll definitely want to induce you at that stage. You can refuse but we will make it ver y difficult for you with asking you to be here daily for EFM checks.’
• ‘If labour isn't progressing quick enough, we will break your waters as that’s an easy way to get things going again.’
• ‘We need to do vaginal exams of course, how else can we measure your progress?’
• ‘You can only opt for physiological third stage if you are not bleeding, otherwise we might have to just give you the hormone and apologise for it afterwards...’
• ‘If you have an emergency C-section, [your husband] won’t be allowed in the theatre as the hospital staff don’t like it when a man comes in as they often pass out!’
• ‘Vacuum extraction is only possible if baby is far down enough in the canal otherwise forceps will be safest and so that’s what we’d use.’
• ‘Never heard of vaginal seeding and that’s not a procedure here so a simple skin to skin if all is well after csection will be allowed.’