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Awful experience

Story from nhs.uk

"Awful experience"

About: Russells Hall Hospital

I had a traumatic experience when giving birth to my child and the staff made it no better. I was very ill afterwards and the staff took their time when coming to me. I wanted to breastfeed but the midwife had no patience and pushed for my baby to be bottlefed, i just wanted to go home and try to salvage what was left of what was meant to be something amazing. No patience was given at all. Also, treating patients differently is unfair! As ill as i was, my partner was told that he could not stay. Yet the lady across me had her partner there, how was that fair? Something needs to be sorted out, its poor show.

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Responses

Response from Russells Hall Hospital 7 years ago
Russells Hall Hospital

Submitted on 06/09/2016 at 11:43
Published on nhs.uk on 07/09/2016 at 02:31

Thank you for taking the time to give us feedback about our maternity services. We always strive to provide the highest standard of care to women on our Maternity Unit and we are very sorry if, on this occasion, our standards fell short of those we aim to provide.

As an accredited UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative service, we would always encourage mums to breastfeed. We would always support mums in whatever decisions they make about feeding and would not normally encourage women to bottle feed.

Occasionally, if babies are having trouble feeding or we have concerns about their nutrition, we may supplement breastfed babies with prescribed formula milk. However, we always expect our midwives to be patient and understanding when women are trying to breast feed and we are sorry for your experience.

We have a number of dedicated Midwifery Infant Feeding Assistants and all midwives and support staff working in our Maternity Unit receive breastfeeding training so that they can provide mothers with the feeding support and guidance needed.

Partners of women on the Maternity Unit are allowed to stay on the unit between 9am and 9pm. After this time, partners are asked to leave the unit to allow women to rest. If women are admitted outside of these hours, their partners are able to stay for a short time to settle them in but cannot stay on the unit. We can only apologise if your partner was asked to leave during the day.

We have passed your comments onto the matron for maternity and our specialist midwife for infant feeding who have raised with their staff the importance of supporting new mums in learning to breastfeed.

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