"Quality of maternity care varies significantly"

I had a baby at C&W a year ago. The midwives in the antenatal unit rarely, if ever, bothered to read my notes at our appointments. Conversation typically went: "Your pregnancy is going well." Me - "No, why don't you look at my notes first". This begs the question as to why expectant mothers are given a book for notes when the midwives don't even bother to look at it. It's poor clinical practice and not hard to rectify. As for the delivery ward (clean), the midwife who cared for me was excellent. But the woman who replaced her when she went on break had a bad attitude and handled me roughly. I ended up with an emergency c section and the doctors responded quickly when my baby was in danger. I was happy about that. However the postnatal care was appalling. The toilets were dirty, the nurses barely bothered to check on us and rarely offered any help - too busy gossiping at their station. But hey we were alive therefore no longer potentially a bad statistic for the hospital so why bother?! The doula came round at 2 am (yes, 2 am) to bang on about how she was available to help me. The junior doctor who did the rounds was good, and the anaesthetist (also good) from the c section came to check on me. No advice given on how to cope with a c section or how to breastfeed with one.