Milton Keynes Hospital scares me!

[lynnikins]

your own link hun says there is no legal requirement for gcse's or A levels but futher down pretty much says without them your screwed and dont have a hope in hell,
My own sister started training as a MW and found the course so tough that she couldnt juggle it with raising her son and had to drop out because of the pressure put on them when training. its not like you can walk up to an NHS trust and ask to be a MW there are actually a couple of years of intense study that go into it.
sorry your experience of MW's hasnt been good but you could consider changing MW's before rubbishing the whole lot

 

[LorelaiLana]

Thanks lynnikins !

I did checkout the midwives textbooks(Myles) and own one as well and religiously read it every night for an hr, so I realise how hard it is. But when I interact with them all the confidence building I do is shattered!

Anyway, the fact is there are MW's and they are the first line of support and my MK hopsital doesnt have the best reputation, not confident with my own MW. I can care for myself now, but for during delivery I got to talk to more people and make a decision for me and my baby regarding hospital and care.

I am going to visit MK, Stoke, Bedford and Northhampton wards and meet a few people and see how it goes.

The thing is I get updated news on MK hospitals theu our papers, but know nothing of the rest. So next will be a known-evil vs unknown-evil and what to do in that case...so! Decisions Decisions!!!

 

[claire23]

1) Havent really bought into the Midwive lead care.
( I think they are glorified citizens, they are not even fully qualified nurses.
Personally feel like they are the old wives in villages.
I know not many feel this way, dont mind being chided abt this opinion of mine.
but I dont feel safe with midwives )

I very rarely disagree with someone, and I respect everyone's opinion but this time I just cannot keep quiet. I think it's a very inappropriate and invalid judgement. I am a senior medical student (qualifying this year) and during my obstetric rotation I have worked alongside midwifes and obstetricians. Midwifes are trained 3 years and then they do a mandatory foundation programme for a couple of year before they can register as an independent midwife. You may not realise, but each hospital has a protocol by which they MUST abide and there is a certain amount of time given for each stage of labour, there are protocols and guidance for pain relief, indications for instrumental interventions, monitoring your baby, etc, etc. Media always portrays bad incidents, and what went wrong. I am not saying that mistakes do not happen but WHY do the midwifes have to take blame for everything? The care of you and the baby is shared whilst you are in the hospital by your immediate midwife, senior midwife, registrar on call and consultant obstetrican on call! I do not believe (and I have never seen) that a midwife would risk her registration and profession to be negligent on purpose.
Sorry if my comments are a bit strong, but I feel quite strongly about this subject as the majority of good work is done by midwifes - this is their role. Consultant obstetricians are there for complicated cases only. It's just such a shame to see that UK has adopted blame culture so quickly and anyone is ready to litigate in trivial circumstances

 

[Lara310809]

You need to know the entire story before you start to worry. If this story is true, then surely the people that dealt with the mother and baby would have been suspended, sacked, struck off etc. If not, you have to ask yourself why. The press are always mixing things up, only telling one side of the story (usually the side that will be guaranteed to shock people) and neglect to present a balanced argument.

I spoke to our hospital when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I said "I've heard you don't give epidurals here". They told me they do give them, but only if they are fully staffed and they can guarantee that you will have the full monitoring that you will require after you've had the epi. If they can't monitor you as well as they would like or need to, then they can't give you the epi. Seems fair enough to me. I would rather go through labour without pain meds (which I did) than have them give me an epi and then neglect to monitor me or my baby, and risk something terrible happening. Perhaps (not saying it's for sure) that's what happened at MK hospital.

And regading the baby that died after 3 days; babies die all the time; you just don't hear about them. Perhaps the baby was so sick nobody could have saved him. It's very rarely due to the medical team looking after them.

TBH if your baby is born just after you become viable, the chances of survival are very slim anyway. If the baby died, it wouldn't necessarily be down to the hospital, but down to the fact that his lungs weren't mature, or he just wasn't ready to be born. If the hospitalcan't care for the baby properly, they will send it out to a hospital that can; but even then if it's really premature, the chances aren't fantastic.

Please don't focus on the epidural alone. I was determined to have one, but I managed the entire labour without. I was abotu to ask for one when my waters broke and I was fully dilated. I had to push without pain relief. I managed it. If it comes down to it, you will too.

I don't want to sound mean, but you have to have faith in yourself. Labour isn't all about the epi. I thought it was, and I got homed in on that, when I shouldn't have done. People have done this for millions of years without epis. You have to wait until you get the pain and then see what happens with your threshold. You may be like me and get through it better than you thoght you would

 

[hayley x]

Personally I wouldnt go to MK hospital either negligence can/does happen anywhere and babies die, but it seems too frequent there x

 

[polo_princess]

Oh and BTW, i see you're going to visit Bedford, i had my daughter there and cannot fault them, they were very very good, recommendation from me on that front

 

[Lara310809]

No I am not considering homebirth for 3 reasons

1) Havent really bought into the Midwive lead care.
( I think they are glorified citizens, they are not even fully qualified nurses.
Personally feel like they are the old wives in villages.
I know not many feel this way, dont mind being chided abt this opinion of mine.
but I dont feel safe with midwives )

2) If something goes wrong then I have to get to the hospital and PRECIOUS time will be wasted in the call-wait-transit-wait to checkin and all that. Dont have the heart to handle it all that wait if my baby is in trouble.

3) I will most certainly need an epidural. I am not a heroic mom who can go with TENS and gas and air or just pethidine.

I dont think there is any advantage in home birth and think all the touted advantages are too foksy for me to buy into it!.

Sorry if thats not your opinion.

I totally appreicate that you won't have a home birth. I, for the same reason wouldn't have one (although you're not allowed to have one here), because I would want immediate medical care if it was needed during or after the labour.

But in regards to everything else you say; your attitude actually annoys me. Midwives are more thoroughly trained than nurses, and you say they haven't even had nursing training? Where on earth do you get that from? Midwives are trained and experienced nurses before they can even go on to become a midwife. When they want to do so they have to go into studies all over again to be able to specialise in midwifery. Your facts are seriously inaccurate, and you shouldn't be spouting them as gospel, because some other women on here will believe them and lose faith in their antenatal care. Where do I get my informaiton from? My MIL who is a retired midwife. She did all that training that you say is non existent.

As for you "needing an epidural", that's total crap. You've lost the fight before it's begun. By that I mean that if you go in there with a defeatist attitude, the pain will defeat you. You don't even know the pain yet; how can you tell you will need an epidural? Go in there with an open mind and you might surprise yourself.

I'll tell you this; I had an ingrowing toenail for many years. I had it operated on many times, but it kept coming back. I was terrible with the pain. I could hardly walk, I would limp. When I would get it seen by a doctor, I would cry with pain because they would touch it and pain throbbed through me. People laughed at me, and several doctors told me I had a "very low pain threshold". I dreaded labour when I got pregnant. I thought that if my pain threshold was laughably low, I would never get through labour without an epidural.

I went into labour, dilated really fast with really painful contractions. I contracted in the bath. All I had was warm water and Gas & Air. Let me tell you; gas & air does nothing for the pain. You still feel it, but you don't care that you feel it, because it makes you high. But it's still painful. The midwives kept asking if I was okay on the pain relief I had, or whether I wanted more. I said I was okay. I wanted to save my epi for when it got really bad.

Turns out I coulnd't have it at all, because I was fully dilated and I had to start pushing. Me, the person with the stupidly low pain threshold was a trooper through labour. Don't ever say you're not the heroic type of mum, because you don't know what you're capable of until you get there. From the horse's mouth.

 

[LorelaiLana]

Lara310809 -> In the case of the baby dying in 3 days, the coroner ruled it was due to gross negligence by the midwives and other staff. A simple treatment with antibiotics cud ahve saved the baby. This did not happen and the parents were repeatedly dismissed when they raised concerns. The baby sufferred and died.

If this shakes me when its someone else's baby then imagine what it will do to a mother if its her own!. There is no recovering from this for that poor family! If it was not their fault then its fine. Even then this is modern times and if US can make a higher % of viable babies live and any other hospital in UK can do that and not the MK hospital then thats the worry!

I know what will happen will happen and there is no stopping the machine. All I can do is mentally prep and medically prep as much as one can.

 

[polo_princess]

I see everyone is quick to jump on the OP for stating her opinion (not fact) yet nobody has bothered to ask her what has made her form that opinion?

We all well know that if you have a bad experience with something/someone then you arent likely to sing their praises. Granted its not fair to tarr all MW's with the same brush, but we've all done it before when we've felt let down. MW's do work extremely hard to qualify, that is fact and you cant deny it.

Maybe this could actually be discussed properly before everyone jumps down her throat.

 

[LorelaiLana]

Lara310809 -> Midwives are not fully trained as nurses. This is a fact! A nurse can become a midwife easily but not a midwife a nurse. Nurses are more qualified than midwives.

Please check your facts before you go on abt it. I have done more research on this than you give me credit for.

Edit -> I just saw your location as Gibraltar. May be this is the case in Gibraltar ? But its not the case in UK. What you outline is the best way for a midwife to be qualified if they are to take all the first line decisions and decide on bringing in the next level of care takers to the case. But sadly its not so. There are relatively fewer nurses who choose to become midwives, most are only qualified as midwives.

 

[lesleyann]

If the hospital is that bad then change..

On the topic of midwifes, its a bloody hard job to get into ive been looking into it, and ive got to do atlest 3more years in education to be able to apply for the midwifery course and even then its a fight to get it since sooo many people apply for a course which may only have a 100 or 200 places. I trust my midwife more than i do my doctor, my midwife is trained to deliver a baby a doctor/GP is not, my doctors did not even know what an EPAU was yet the nurses and midwifes do

 

[sam#3]

us midwives have to undergo extremely intense training for 3 years to get the midwifery degree.... and as for no need for formal qualifications midwifery is incredibly tough and competitive to get in to and you DO need qualifications in order to get the UCAS points that the university want before you will even be considered for an interview..... so do not belittle something you clearly do not know enough about....

 

[Lara310809]

Lara310809 -> Midwives are not fully trained as nurses. This is a fact! A nurse can become a midwife easily but not a midwife a nurse. Nurses are more qualified than midwives.

Please check your facts before you go on abt it. I have done more research on this than you give me credit for.

Sorry, but I know a lot about midwives, since I'm married to the son of one. I have spoken to her loads about her training etc, and I know for a fact that she was told she had to become a nurse before she could advance to become a midwife. It appears you're looking in different areas than I am. My MIL was trained in the UK under British laws. If they said she had to qualify as a nurse first, then that must be law. I'm open to accept that perhaps that's not the case anymore; perhaps now you don't have to do nursing before you qualify as a midwife, but I'm positive they would teach the midwives life saving techniques, nursing etc. They cannot allow a full team of midwives to run an entire department in a hospital if they're not up tot he job.

EDIT; I don't mean to attack you on this. I don't have anything against you, but it irritates me when I see things written about things that I know aren't true. Obviously we both "know" different things. I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you on this one.

 

[Blah11]

No I am not considering homebirth for 3 reasons

1) Havent really bought into the Midwive lead care.
( I think they are glorified citizens, they are not even fully qualified nurses.
Personally feel like they are the old wives in villages.
I know not many feel this way, dont mind being chided abt this opinion of mine.
but I dont feel safe with midwives )

2) If something goes wrong then I have to get to the hospital and PRECIOUS time will be wasted in the call-wait-transit-wait to checkin and all that. Dont have the heart to handle it all that wait if my baby is in trouble.

3) I will most certainly need an epidural. I am not a heroic mom who can go with TENS and gas and air or just pethidine.

I dont think there is any advantage in home birth and think all the touted advantages are too foksy for me to buy into it!.

Sorry if thats not your opinion.

I totally appreicate that you won't have a home birth. I, for the same reason wouldn't have one (although you're not allowed to have one here), because I would want immediate medical care if it was needed during or after the labour.

But in regards to everything else you say; your attitude actually annoys me. Midwives are more thoroughly trained than nurses, and you say they haven't even had nursing training? Where on earth do you get that from? Midwives are trained and experienced nurses before they can even go on to become a midwife. When they want to do so they have to go into studies all over again to be able to specialise in midwifery. Your facts are seriously inaccurate, and you shouldn't be spouting them as gospel, because some other women on here will believe them and lose faith in their antenatal care. Where do I get my informaiton from? My MIL who is a retired midwife. She did all that training that you say is non existent.

As for you "needing an epidural", that's total crap. You've lost the fight before it's begun. By that I mean that if you go in there with a defeatist attitude, the pain will defeat you. You don't even know the pain yet; how can you tell you will need an epidural? Go in there with an open mind and you might surprise yourself.

I'll tell you this; I had an ingrowing toenail for many years. I had it operated on many times, but it kept coming back. I was terrible with the pain. I could hardly walk, I would limp. When I would get it seen by a doctor, I would cry with pain because they would touch it and pain throbbed through me. People laughed at me, and several doctors told me I had a "very low pain threshold". I dreaded labour when I got pregnant. I thought that if my pain threshold was laughably low, I would never get through labour without an epidural.

I went into labour, dilated really fast with really painful contractions. I contracted in the bath. All I had was warm water and Gas & Air. Let me tell you; gas & air does nothing for the pain. You still feel it, but you don't care that you feel it, because it makes you high. But it's still painful. The midwives kept asking if I was okay on the pain relief I had, or whether I wanted more. I said I was okay. I wanted to save my epi for when it got really bad.

Turns out I coulnd't have it at all, because I was fully dilated and I had to start pushing. Me, the person with the stupidly low pain threshold was a trooper through labour. Don't ever say you're not the heroic type of mum, because you don't know what you're capable of until you get there. From the horse's mouth.

You're slightly wrong. You can train as a nurse then do another year to get a mw degree too but you can just do a 3 year MW course without doing nursing.

 

[sam#3]

and as for MK hospital i have never heard anyone say anything good about it

 

[sam#3]

and just to add you can train to be a MW without doing nursing but as it is easier to get into adult nursing at uni some people do that for 3 years then do an 18 month top-up programme for midwifery

 

[Allie84]

The more I read this thread, the more I think you should just switch hospitals. I understand the 'better the devil you know' fears you have, but it sounds like you will have no confidence in them at all, and if you are feeling that way now, it will probably be worse once you are labor. I guess I would still say go tour the ward but it sounds like you have many better options out there. Go with your gut instinct.

 

[Blah11]

Lara - might not be the best idea to get upto date information off of someone who did their training 20 or 30 years ago lol

 

[LorelaiLana]

Thanks polo_princess for the support!

 

[LorelaiLana]

Thanks Allie84! I agree! Got to go with the gut!

I am preparing the gut to let me know what it wants to do!