Your article (‘My child was drowning’: life and death in an English maternity ward, March 26) made for beneficial reading. In our experience as clinical psychologists who have been working to support midwives, obstetricians and student midwives for a number of years, we recognize the complexity of the challenges maternity care faces.
The idea that the problems are due to one issue or person, such as a combative midwife, or a conflict between the approaches of midwives and midwives, will not lead to the improvements that are needed. We see problems across the system, with overburdened employees at all levels, often at breaking point and feeling like they can never get it right. They experience a lot of trauma, but usually do not dare to talk about their own vulnerability. What staff need is what new parents need: to be listened to and understood, with opportunities to express the emotional impact of what they are experiencing.
Giving birth is hard enough, but to give babies the best start in life we need the opposite of services where staff are stressed, underfunded and under enormous pressure. Attention should be paid to the experience of the entire maternity team, creating opportunities for reflection and learning from this.
The government must listen and understand the support the whole system needs, including adequate funding, to implement the changes in culture and practice that parents and staff so urgently need.
Lucia Marks, Dr. Brigid MacCarthy and Dr. Tamara Gelman
London
I am a midwife. I qualified in 2009 and have worked in a number of hospitals. The situations described – the attitude of management, the blind continuation of unsafe practices – all reminded me why I left. I witnessed and/or experienced bullying, racism and discrimination against staff and patients. I saw cases with such poor care that I cried in my car afterwards, constantly worrying about my own name still visible in those hospital records decades later.
Poor decisions made without medical evidence by consultants who continued to work despite complaints from staff and patients; the misuse of hospital resources by doctors and midwives with other private interests. The article reminded me why I no longer work in maternity care and why I am grateful to have my family complete and not have to become another victim. I’m devastated that I’m no longer doing the work I loved, but I can’t return to a broken system.
Name and address provided
My NHS midwife offered private hypnobirthing courses at the local birth centre, where I felt that the midwife-led center was the best option for achieving a ‘natural’ birth. I regret choosing to give birth in a birth center. I wish I had listened to a consultant friend who suggested that hospital was a safer choice as a new mother. My son’s heart rate dropped and I struggled to deliver because he was back to back (something they never shared with me). An ambulance was called to take me to Winchester, but the midwives panicked when the heating in the resuscitation room broke – during a snowstorm. I was affected physically and mentally, but my son survived.
When I later became pregnant with twins, I was terrified at the prospect of another midwife-led birth. I was so grateful to be assigned Martyn Pitman, the whistleblower mentioned in your article, to oversee my care. It felt like he valued what was best for me and my babies, not what would be best for data reporting. They have lost a good doctor who may have been brusque, but strove for the best for patients.
Lauren Burrows
Winchester
What a moving, heartbreaking article – so carefully researched and put together. Thanks to the families who contributed. It is shameful that the safety of vulnerable women and babies is compromised by political decisions affecting staffing levels or any other issue. Safety must come first, without compromise; the lives of women and their babies are too precious.
Jane Vessey
Winchester
The account of Norah Bassett’s short life and death is a fresh indictment of Britain’s failure to respond to decades of evidence of deterioration, dysfunction and underinvestment in maternity care. After years of stagnant progress, Britain is currently down in the rankings 29th out of 38 OECD countries on infant mortality rates; maternal mortality in Britain is significantly higher than in previous years; And 87% of midwives believe that staffing levels are unsafe and many are leaving the profession.
The Morecambe Bay Report 2015 exposed a decade of deadly deficiencies in competency, culture and leadership in maternity care. Subsequent and ongoing research shows that these problems persist across the UK.
I am a midwife who left the NHS due to the unsafe environment. I started the With Woman Movement because I want a fundamental change in the way services are delivered, staffed and managed in Britain. More than 1,000 midwives are joined by parents, NHS staff and others who share our concerns. We are not prepared to wait years for a costly public inquiry into what is wrong. We are putting together low-cost ways to pool our knowledge about maternity care and what needs to be done to make it safe.
I leave John o’Groats on June 3 for the first part of a trip to Land’s End, where I will gather information about pregnancy issues and stories from local midwives and families. I will be accompanied by midwives, parents, nurses, doctors and community leaders as I make my way to Inverness. If you have a story, concern or idea to share, come walk a mile with me or join me for a cup of tea during a stop.
Victoria Rixon
Plymouth, Devon