"Difficult labour at Hillingdon Hospital"

I am 21 years old and my baby is now coming up to 14 months old.

I went to Hillingdon Hospital when the pain was unbearable to find out that I was only 3cm dilated by a midwife who was quite rude. She told me at that point that I had to go home. As I was that far gone, I refused and ended up sitting in like a reception area where other mothers to be were strapped to monitors.

About 1 hour later I was taken back to the room in Labour Ward and made to sit on the bed with more cables wrapped arond me.

To cut a long story short I was left on my own with my boyfriend which seemed like hours, the rude midwife then went off duty and 2 midwives appeared and they were so nice and professional and they both stayed with me through the whole thing.

I had to have an epidural to stop me turning into someone from the exorcist, but my baby was "back to back" with me and I had to decide there and then if I could see myself having a big family in the future as if the baby didn't turn in the next hour I would have to have a c-section.

Luckily the baby did turn and I had a natural birth, but with the help of the suction - but that didn't hold onto the baby's head properly so I had to have forceps. The baby was bruised all around her neck and I felt awful having not had the energy to push her out myself.

The doctor that stitched me up was so nice and although I had a bleed where they didn't know where it was coming from - I couldn't feel a thing as I was still feeling numb from the pain relief. My boyfriend on the other hand was worried so much by what he was seeing that I think he had a worse off time than me and I think that doctors/surgeons and nurses should have more positive feedback.

There are some more patient staff than others, but when my baby had jaudice which the staff didn't notice until day 2, they carted me off to a private room and I was left on my own until my baby was 5 days old under the lamps etc. I found that more distressing than my birth and would have preferred to go back to when my mum had me and they carted me off and dealt with the lamps themselves - seeing my newborn baby under lamps with the eye patches on just made me feel stressed and worse than anything.

The midwives that delievered my baby didn't leave my side for a moment and I just wanted to say: Thank you to you all for the adventure of my first babys birth.