Alison’s story*
I went into hospital for a growth scan – all normal. During this appointment they took my blood pressure as it had been high at my last few midwife appointments.
It was indeed high and there was protein showing in my urine. I was told, I could not leave and would need to deliver early. I was 36+5. Luckily, we had recently packed 'the bag' and we had this in the car.
I was a high-risk pregnancy and consultant led, they began the process of an induction. After two failed attempts they stopped trying to give me the pessary - they did give me an evil drip of oxytocin which made me feel awful - I cried most of the night. In the early hours of the morning my consultant returned and said something that has never left me. She said she thought I “would have had enough time to calm down now”. This felt like a slap in the face, I was already so emotional and distressed at the prospect of having my son early. Having never had a baby before, how should I have felt?
My baby’s heart rate started to jump around and they were unhappy. They suggested it was looking like an emergency c-section. At this point, I felt relief and said “Yes please, I just want to get him out safely.” I was paralysed with fear, exhaustion and felt as if everything was happening around me, without me.
The next part was a blur, but I remember I felt weirdly safer having the section than I had in that room with the midwives.
Afterwards, I felt so emotional and upset – the impact this trauma had on me and my son, meant our first few weeks were fraught with anxiety and worry, when you're supposed to be in a happy bubble. The exhaustion took a real toll on me and I did everything I could to get discharged quickly. We did manage to get home, but unfortunately, we had to be readmitted as my son lost too much weight. Not helped by a midwife miscalculation of his weight meaning we should have gone back to hospital even earlier than we had. The guilt I have felt over this period of time, because I felt I was doing it wrong, despite very little to no breastfeeding support offered while I was in hospital or from the midwife would visited my home.
The biggest thing that strikes be about this, is the lack of care and attention to me. It was all about my baby in relation to me. Never focused on, how are you, how do you feel. No time for reassurance or proper help. Just blood pressure ✅ tablets taken ✅ all tick box checks. It breaks my heart to see the NHS like this.
My recovery is ongoing. I accessed counselling via my work as I registered for NHS Talking Therapies and to this day, I have not heard back. I may physically be over what happened, but I struggled to have a smear test recently due to the trauma of the failed induction. I dread my next one because of this. I also have not been able to consider having another baby until very recently – though I'm still not sure I feel able to do this.
Today, I feel angry for my experience and sad I was unable to advocate for myself. What would have helped me at the time would have been a conversation about what was going to happen next, to have involved me and reassured me that even though I hadn't watched the breathing videos yet (!!) , we would be able to and I could do this. I needed reassurance and to be able to talk about what was happening to me and to acknowledge this wasn't our original plan. I felt I didn't even have the chance to have him naturally – it was always off the cards because of how terrified I was and they did very little to address my mental health – just focused on my physical health at all times. And all because of a lack of resources – because our NHS is broken.
*Not her real name
