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"Worst experience, unsafe and extremely..."

About: Newham General Hospital / Maternity care

I had a 5 day stay in hospital after being in labour for 3 days, I gave birth to a baby girl. The whole experience at Newham was traumatic. The whole maternity process is long winded as you need to keep changing wards at each stage of labour the wait you have to do in order to get to the next ward is an absolute joke in our circumstance we waited a whole 24hours just to get to the labour after being told many times it would only be a half an hours wait. Infact getting anything done in that place is ridiculous Midwifes have 2seconds for you and say they will be back for treatment or medicine and are gone for hours I had to get my husband to find them many times. I needed induction as my waters broke before contractions started they said this classed me as high risk as the baby could catch an infection. I spent hours on the ward before anyone would do bloods pre gel induction, then hours after bloods taken before anybody would apply the gel - not to mention the fact that nobody then monitored me inbetween that time I was in so much pain and discomfort trying to get pain relief (only paracetamol) off the midwives was a nightmare it would be hours before anyone would come to see you. The wards are extremely short staffed so therefore you are left for hours in pain or unmonitored. The gel failed and I hadn't dilated I had to go to the labour ward as by this point I was in so much pain I wanted an epidural but they couldn't start it on the assessment unit - I ended up waiting a whole 24hours before I could get on the labour ward. Finally on the labour ward we can start the next line of induction we thought things would start moving quicker now bearing in mind that the baby is at risk because I've lost my waters -it took 6 hours before a doctor could see me and treatment couldn't be started until one had seen me and assessed me - the wait and delay for everything was just not on. I was to have the drip induction. This wasn't started for a further two hours! I was on the drip for 15 hours the midwife who had me for the first part of the induction was brilliant on the ball monitored me well, on top of my pain, listened to me in decision making etc then shift changed another midwife on - they were terrible they were not on top of my pain they kept falling behind on their paperwork they couldn't manage to give my antibiotics on time or maintain my pain level whenever doctors came for handover they didn't gave a clue I was updating them most of the time in my state! My pain was so bad I kept telling them to turn the rates down of the in drip but they wouldnt listen I was having contractions every 3 secs but still not dilated much I asked for an epidural again it took hours before they would chase it finally anasthetists came it took them 4 attempts to get an epidural in I had backache for ages. By 8am I was fully dilated however became very sick spiking temperature shivering uncontrollably baby's heart rate going sky high we had to go theatre for an emergency delivery!

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