"not receiving the level of maternity care i would have expected"

I had my first 4 children at stepping hill and the staff were fantastic, I could not have wished for any better. With my 5th child I was 22 weeks preganant and had extremly bad stomach pains and kept bleeding.

I was seen at Maternity triage twice, they monitored the baby and did a urine test and said everything was fine and sent me home. A couple of days later I felt like I was in labour, the stomach pains were awful, so I went back again, this time they did another urine sample, and a swab to see if I was going to go into labour with in the next two weeks. I was admitted to the ward and given pethadine for the pain and I had an infection.

Whilst in hospital I was in a cubicle with 3 other ladies, the toilet was facing our room. I was in so much pain I could hardly walk. At about 2am a nurse/midwife woke me up to tell me that myself and two other ladies could not use the toilet as another lady needed that toilet to herself. At around 4am I woke and needed the toilet, it wasn't a far walk to the other toilet but I could hardly walk and I had an infection so when I needed it I had literally seconds to get there. I was disgusted that I could not use the closer toilet.

It turns out that I had an ecoli infection, if they had picked up on this the first couple of times I was seen at the hospital the same week I could have been given the medication and I would not have ended up having such servere pain and having to stay in for a few days.

I was in so much pain and I pressed the buzzer as I needed some pain relief and could not move after the second time of pressing it a midwife from delivery suite came in and asked what was wrong so I expained I needed some pain relief and she said she would get a midwife to come and see me straight away, I waited over an hour and nobody turned up. So I had to buzz again. I understand that the staff are really busy and probably understaffed but I think this is an awful way to be treated. After this experience I changed to a different hospital and I would never go back to the maternity department again.