"My experience at Newham General Hospital....Part 1"

I gave birth at Newham General Hospital by emergency C section in Dec 2015. Although I am still recovering and I’m very busy looking after a baby who hasn’t been well - I feel compelled to sit down and write about the horrific experience I’ve had.

I went to the hospital after my water broke 4 weeks before my due date. I was absolutely terrified as this is my first baby and I wasn’t mentally prepared for anything to happen so long before my due date. The hospital staff checked and confirmed my water broke and kept me in a ward on the ground floor hoping I’ll progress into labour naturally.

Nothing happened after 24 hours and I got anxious. Checked NHS website and other sites and found many articles highlighting the risk of infection to the baby, if nothing is done after 24 hours of loss of water. My hubby spoke to the midwives more than 10 times to get clarification on why nothing is being done after 24 hours and then after 36 hours of loss of water, the response was there is no bed available in the maternity ward and they are aware of the NHS website guidance but they are understaffed so can’t do anything!

Once I got to the maternity ward 40 hours after my water broke I couldn’t progress to labour naturally and the doctors decided to induce me. Epidural was administered by a doctor with zero empathy and as soon as the pump was set up there was a beeping noise and a message started flashing saying ‘low battery.’ One of the doctors told the midwife to look into this and left. The beeping continued for couple of hours and hubby kept asking why this message is coming up and if something should be done but no one listened. Suddenly the pain started getting worse and it got really really bad. I kept pressing the epidural boost button to get extra epidural but nothing helped. The midwife got another person to come and look at the machine and guess what the battery died and I wasn’t getting any epidural anymore!!! After what seemed like eternity, they replaced the battery and I started feeling a little bit better.

We couldn’t believe it that something like this could happen and no one even apologised!!!

After the shock episode with the battery problem soon the staff members caused more unnecessary pain to me. When the battery was replaced for whatever reason the remaining amount calculator of the epidural pump was reset. So the machine kept thinking there is a lot of liquid left when you can see there is nothing in the bag. Pain started getting worse again and soon reached unbearable point because of the strong contractions I was getting at this point. We had to ask for help several times before someone came and figured out what happened and after another agonising 20 minutes or so someone gave us a new bag of epidural liquid.

Believe it or not no one bothered to even apologise instead they acted like its nothing!!