"Grateful and happy to have such an amazing team"

I attended the BGH to have my first child. I have extremely bad anxiety and was terrified to give birth and to be in hospital after previous medical trauma.

The Labour ward staff were so kind and supportive- going above and beyond to help support me through the labour. My labour was perfect and pretty much everything I wanted, the staff did everything they could to follow my birth plan. Even helping go above and beyond to put more support in place to help with my needle phobia. After my labour I suffered from a big blood loss and the staff were so fast in taking action to help save my life.

When I attended ward 16 for postnatal care the midwives were amazing in helping me establish breastfeeding. I struggled a lot mentally and was very emotional on the ward and every midwife that I met during my stay did their best to help me, giving me reassurance and encouragement. The kindness of all the staff on the wards will stay with me forever and despite the trauma of my blood loss, I look back at my labour and first few days postpartum and feel grateful and happy to have such an amazing team of women looking after me.

I’d also like to specially recognise the midwife Kerry, who was working on nightshift and helped me for over 45 minutes one night to try calm my baby, even offering to take her to the midwife station so I could rest. She was so helpful in advice and encouragement when I felt so bad in myself, she picked me up and made me feel confident that I could be a mum to my baby. Also the two midwives who were there during my labour but unfortunately I don’t remember their names, they were so encouraging and even when the amount of blood I lost was quite shocking they stayed calm and acted so fast, which helped my anxiety so much.