"I thought I would be taken care of."

I had my first baby at St Thomas' Hospital. I was naïve and thought I would be taken care of. Nearly two weeks overdue with a reduced fetal movement I was admitted. There were no beds (really, no midwives) in the Maternity Ward, so I continued to wait. 24 hours before I was fully two weeks overdue they administered gel to induce labour. No one checked on my progress for 12 hours. They administered more gel, I was 1 cm dilated. They checked me again eight hours later, at 1 cm, they broken my waters. Thick meconium but it seemed to me that the midwife's only concern was what a mess it was for her to clean up.

Six hours later, they started a hormone drip. Another six hours later I was told the amount of hormone given was more than the medically allowed amount. I was having severe and close contractions and remained 1 cm; there was fetal distress. So at 6. 45am I signed the "consent" for an emergency c-section and the baby was out by 7. 05am. I could feel pretty much everything during the c-section. It was like being disemboweled - my body was pulled right off the table they used so much force to get the baby out.

My after care was miserable. The midwives who treated me would have been hard pressed to be ruder and less helpful. They are busy, yes I know, but I think they could also putting lives at risk by not listening to very real and valid concerns of mothers (particularly first time mothers, who were universally dismissed as complete idiots by each and every midwife I encountered).

After the c-section I was in a lot of pain and had a very long recovery (well over 12 months). My baby had a tongue tie. Neither the midwives or breastfeeding counselor at St Thomas's could diagnose it. I was given every excuse conceivable how the feeding difficulties were down to me - my nipples were wrong, I held the baby wrong, etc etc. I was told to try harder. Of course I ended up with mastitis.

It took a private consultant 30 seconds to diagnose the tongue tie and 5 minutes to fix it. It has taken me years to recover physically and emotionally from the damage St Thomas's did to me. The hospital destroyed what should have been a fraught, but fundamentally, happy experience. I complained through official channels. My complaint was put off and deferred for 10 months before I received a response. The response was essentially that it was too long ago to meaningfully investigate. I requested my maternity records. The records were missing the very pages which I was interested in - I requested the missing pages twice - I never received a response to either request.

I had my second baby at Chelsea & Westminster. It was a whole different world. The care was not flawless (that is not the standard I expect) but it was sound and it could even, without irony, be called "care".