"Let down by silly mistakes"

Anything else?

I recently delivered a healthy bouncy baby in the delivery suite at Watford. The pregnancy was high risk throughout and I was thrilled that as a result of a hard working and dedicated team I was able to deliver the baby naturally without pain relief. Unfortunately immediately after delivery I suffered some serious issues with stage 3 of the labour that resulted in a 6 day stay in hospital and ongoing care, unfortunately 1 month later I still require care. Overall I could not fault the treatment, I had and continue to have absolute faith in the consultants directly responsible for my care and was impressed with the care offered by the majority of the midwives though out my stay. There were however done silly issues, easily rectified, that have had a very negative impact on my experience and I feel they should be raised. - on arrival at the maternity unit a swab was taken. For some reason despite the fact that I remained in the hospital for 6 days it took 16 days to notify me of the results, "severe candida growth". By this time I had already visited my GP as I was concerned the inflammation and issues I was facing were not consistent with normal post natal recovery associated with the complaints I knew was suffering from. He advised I now had the worst case of thrush he had ever seen. Frustrating to spend a week in hospital with the condition worsening despite that I had been tested for it. Frankly it was the last thing I needed and could so easily have been avoided if the results had been actioned. - the post natal complications I have in the majority of cases inhibit milk supply, I.e. your milk does not come through. Despite this I was not advised and the midwives continued to apply enormous pressure to breast feed. 48 hours after delivery my baby is taken to neonatal to be treated for dehydration as she had desperately been feeding off a mother with no milk that no one had bothered to tell, in fact quite the opposite. I accept breast is best, in fact it was a great disappointment to me to have to resort to formula but in cases such as mine the midwives have a responsibility to make you aware that formula may be required. Even after the issue was established and I was instructed by the paediatric to use formula until such time as my milk came through, if indeed it did, the midwives continued to lecture and apply pressure to breast feed. At this point my baby was latching on every 3 hours for 30 minutes, followed by a 30 minute formula feed followed by expressing for 40 minutes in hope that it would trigger milk production. This meant I was sleeping for barely an hour at a time during the night. - big issue with distribution of medication. On more than one occasion I was given drugs at varying tones throughout the day and on some occasions medication forgotten so I had to remind them. Twice I was actually told off by the drugs distributor for not reminding them to give me drugs.