Birthing Pains

I was asked to complete a questionnaire about my experiences of childbirth and include those thoughts here:

My greatest concern during the birth of our second and third sons was that the midwives we had did not really know what they were doing. They were both very inexperienced and spent most of their time filling in forms. Obviously, staff need experience to develop their skills but their was minimal supervision; both births were late evening or during the night. I read recently that infant death in childbirth was higher during out of hours deliveries and my personal experience would echo that concern.

The second birth was induced, like the first, and I told the midwife that my wife would respond quickly to the drip so she should time the procedure to ensure the anaesthetist was available. She ignored me and my consequently spent several hours in intense pain because she went quickly into labour but could not get the epidural. Then the foetal heart rate was oscillating from 50 to 300 and clearly he had the cord wrapped around his neck. The midwife ignored my concerns and carried on filling in forms. I became increasingly agitated, insisting that a consultant or senior midwife was brought but the prissy little bitch still ignored me. Her main concern was that I was being abusive. Eventually, the gynaecologist did turn up and immediately crashed my wife for a C-Section. In the end he was able to unwrap the chord and deliver normally.

During the third birth the young midwife could not find the cervix so was adamant that delivery was not imminent. I thought otherwise and constantly requested a second opinion and my wife was screaming for the anaesthetist again. This went on for a while. The young anaesthetist did come see and tried bluffing my wife that she was not ready to deliver. A while later the senior midwife on shift did turn up, examined my wife and felt my son's head! He was delivered without pain relief at all.

To summarise my concerns: Inexperienced staff need more and closer supervision and they should also listen to the concerns of the woman in labour and birthing partners.