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Care Opinion

ELCS experience

Posted By sierracx98

"ELCS experience"

About: Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital (Wonford) / Maternity

(as the patient),

C-section went ok, but I seem to have had a lot of nerves cut so my recovery is now longer (and I hope I won’t get permanent damages). I also feel that the surgeon could have done a better job on the scar, I now have to do scar massages with a physiotherapist to ease it and reduce the associated pain.

For my next baby, I would really much prefer getting a c-section somewhere else due to this chronic pain and lack of care for my recovery in the long run.

Also, for a service that says that they want to facilitate breastfeeding, not being able to have its partner at night is counter effective. For instance, if you need to start your milk production with hand expressing or pumping, you need someone you feel comfortable with to take care of your baby in the meantime. Nurses can’t make you feel comfortable to do so for long. They are busy, so you don’t feel at ease to call them repeatedly to care for the baby for 30 min every other hours to have the time to work on the milk production during the night. Plus you feel pressured having the nurse/midwife next to you that is looking at what you’re doing and commenting on how you do stuffs (and all nurses have different, often contradictory, advice).

Having your partner helping you with the rest of the baby care at night would greatly help women making the investment to be on a good breastfeeding track. Overall, I hope I will be able to move to a bigger city to have my next c-section in a better service.

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Responses

Response from Sue Budd, Senior Administrator, Maternity (Eastern Services), Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust 3 weeks ago
Sue Budd
Senior Administrator, Maternity (Eastern Services),
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 08/04/2024 at 10:27
Published on Care Opinion at 10:28

Hello Sierracx98

Thank you for taking the time to write your comments,

I have forwarded this to a Senior Member of the maternity team for them to look at, your opinion matters a great deal and I am sure they will respond to you as soon as possible.

Congraulations on the birth of your baby.

Kind regards

Sue

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Response from Hazel Duckworth, Transformation Midwife (Eastern Services), Maternity (Eastern Services), Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust 3 weeks ago
We are preparing to make a change
Hazel Duckworth
Transformation Midwife (Eastern Services), Maternity (Eastern Services),
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

I work as part of the Maternity Transformation project with the local maternity and neonatal service to improve services for patients and staff.

Submitted on 08/04/2024 at 12:40
Published on Care Opinion at 13:16

Dear sierracx98

Thankyou for taking the time to give your feedback about the care received in RDUH. We are really sorry that you are finding the scar an issue and having to receive physio for the nerve pain. We hope that this will resolve with time. We do have physios that work in the Centre for Women's health department that I am sure would be happy to see you if you felt you needed any further advice. You can request a referral through your Midwife in the community or your GP.

In response to partners staying on the ward we are aware that this has recently been highlighted from service users and it is something that we have done in the past. We do try to support requests to have partners staying on an individual basis but unfortunately we only have limited space in individual rooms and these are often given to those with high medical needs. However, we are work closely with the other maternity units in Devon and this is something that has just been discussed and implemented as a trial in another unit so this may be a change that we consider in the future to allow partners to stay postnatally. We will keep you updated on this.

For breastfeeding support we have implemented some over the bed cots for use with women who have had a C-section. Our plan is over time to replace all our cots with the over the bed ones so all women get the benefit of these to support with breastfeeding. We have also launched a breastfeeding booklet with tips, information and support so that women are not feeling that staff are giving contradictory advice.

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Update posted by sierracx98 (the patient)

Thank you for your detailed response.

To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think there are physiotherapists that have the training in scar massage therapy (that’s usually an extra specialisation they have to take). If you do, it would be nice to communicate this information to women who had a c-section. If you don’t, that would nice to have a physiotherapist trained on it.

Women who had a c-section should also be given a leaflet or something about performing scar massages on their c-section scar themselves (for a good scar recovery and to avoid adhesions). This is standard practice in some other hospitals.

I’m glad to know that letting partners stay is already being under consideration.

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