"Degredation in the Delivery Room"

This is a complaint with regards to both mine and my partners treatment when we gave birth to our son on the 26th July 2008. My partner and I decided to go into the women and children's department of Hull infirmary, on the Friday evening at approximately 10.30pm as I thought I was quite far gone with the labour and did not want to end up having our baby in a taxi on the way.

When we got there the midwife who was seeing to us was very pleasant and left us to get on with the contractions as it was my second child and I was quite happy with her to do that. She had a look through my notes and I told her that I did not want any male staff to see to me and she said that that would not be a problem as there was only one male staff member on site that evening and I would be able to be seen by the female doctor instead. Little did I know that after a few hours we would have not got any nearer completion of the delivery of our baby and that once I had been using the gas and air as pain relief that I would be subjected to bullying and made to feel like if I did not do as the staff there wanted I would lose the baby.

One of the nurses even accidentally broke my waters when she was poking around checking my dilation. Which seems a little unprofessional. Looking back on the experience I do not feel that what the midwife's and doctors were trying to bully me into would have resulted in the loss of our baby I just think I'd spent too long there and they wanted to free up the bed space. Also I do not think there was any need to have been man handled by so many different members of the staff be it both men and women.

My partner was told to get out of the way on numerous occasions when he wasn't even in anyone's way.

I felt very degraded and violated by the time all the doctors had finished poking around at me, I had our son at 12pm on Saturday through a C- Section.

Also I do not understand the point in having one of the maternity booklets to log in what I would like during the labour if the staff at the hospital are going to disregard my wishes for females only and then bring in a male doctor when there was an adequate female doctor there ready and willing to do what needed to be done. And she was in the doorway ready and willing to help me but instead they decided that a male doctor would be better, when all he did was poke around a bit and tell me nothing we didn't already know.

I would like to say though that once I had to be taken to have a C-section both me and my partner were very pleased with the competency and efficiency of the surgery staff.