Post 19 Mothers, midwives and management

This is my first ‘ode free’ blog, due to no suitable historic verse. Normal service to be resumed with the next post!

I little thought that this next blog would be such a glaring example of Forward to the Past realities; then and now. But, with the disturbing Ockenden report of deaths and cover ups at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, I couldn’t help comparing my personal experiences of childbirth during the seventies and eighties.

We moved to wonderful Wales in 1972. Our first son was born in 1973. Our only daughter in 1975; and our second son in 1982. All were born at home; mainly due to our living in isolated country areas; far away from medical facilities.

I don’t remember either of us being at all concerned at this scenario. In fact, subsequently, I remember all three confinements as being fulfilling experiences, when our three beautiful children came into this world.

Picture the first scene. When I became pregnant with Rory, our first, we were in the middle of renovating our rundown property, with the help of a local authority grant (possibly the subject for a future blog on what is in the past), and we were a trifle concerned that it wasn’t quite in the right condition to be bringing new life into the world.

 Doctor H. from the Whitland surgery, a charming chap, came to inspect our home, to establish its suitability. At that time renovation work was still in ‘demolition’ stage. We had removed the ceilings between the front room and one of the bedrooms above, exposing the loft rafters and creating what became to be called the ‘Cathedral’ due to the lofty dimensions of the space created. I remember my only worry was the cast iron fireplace, hovering worryingly above our heads in the bedroom chimney wall.

We waited anxiously for Doctor H’s decision. After a tour, he ended up gazing up into the ‘Cathedral’ void and then announced cheerily “Well, you aren’t going to be ready for the next one, let alone in a few months’ time. But, you have hot water, heating, a bed and a telephone, so I don’t see a problem”!

When we questioned him further about the possibilities of ‘problems’, he reassured us that, although there was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be any, “we will identify any such well before the day; so nothing to worry about”! Luckily, there were not any and, on the 18^th of April, at 10.30 pm, Rory was born.

Well before delivery day, we were allocated our Midwife, Stella,  a wonderfully proficient and friendly professional from St Clears. She visited regularly and guided us through our pregnancy with all the support necessary for would be parents. These were the days before scans, so we were dependent on this information. She left us just before midnight, on the 18^th, with us hovering over Rory’s crib, having immediately acquired the new parents’ conviction that, if we stopped gazing at this miracle, he would stop breathing!

At 7 am the next morning, Pete had to take a blood sample to Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen. On his way, and bursting with his exciting news, he stopped at the small farm where we regularly collected our ‘raw’ milk supplies. Before he could get the words out of his mouth, the farmer’s wife said “So, you’ve had a little boy”! The jungle telegraph was even more efficient than the internet is these days!

And, two years later, on the sixth of June 1975, our gorgeous daughter, Donna, was born. We had the same midwife; and the same brilliant professional care. Donna was in a terrific hurry to enter the world. I phoned Stella early morning, to tell her that I had ‘started’ and she said she would be around later “to see how I was getting on”. But, by ten o clock, I had to ring her again, because the birth felt ‘imminent’. She arrived post haste, to find me in the throes of advanced labour, with Rory holding my hand, asking “are you all right Mummy”? I was ordered not to move from the bed.

 Peter was working away in Llandeilo, refining his newly acquired building skills on a plastering job. When Stella phoned to inform him of my speedy progress, his reaction to our second confinement was bordering on the casual. “How soon is it? I’ve got a wall going off here”! But he reacted suitably swiftly when she said he ‘might’ make it in time if he left straight away! And he did, just as Donna was born before noon.

Jump another seven years to 1982. By this time, we were living on our windy hill in another part of Carmarthenshire (see blog 18). As mentioned in previous blogs, we lived 800 feet up a 1 in 4 gradient stony track. On the 18^th of April, exactly nine years after Rory’s birth, I started my labour. That day, the house was full of energetic noisy friends of Rory’s, who had arrived to celebrate his ninth birthday. The kitchen table groaned with cakes, crisps and traffic light jelly; and I was trying to convince myself that the labour pains were ‘psychological’.

 Our new midwife, Kathleen, (another excellent example of professional midwifery) had assumed that I would be going into hospital for the birth; but, due to my deliberate delay in phoning her in time, and the fact that, in her haste to get to my side, she had ‘done’ the sump of her car in on our stony track, we were all stuck at home. To give her her due, she was almost as excited at our home birth as us; being her first experience of such. Everything went smoothly. I had no medication; not even gas and air, and, almost to the hour, our second son, Patrick was born nine years after his older brother. Pete and Kathleen celebrated with alcohol in the wrecked kitchen; while I cuddled and crooned over our new little miracle upstairs in bed.

That’s, nearly, the end of this description of childbirth. The reason for this rather overlong monologue is to highlight the differing attitude to giving birth then and now. The confidence in the system behind those local professionals stands out from the practice of today. That a Doctor could state, with breezy certainty, that any ‘problems’ would be picked up before they became serious, shows that, over forty years ago, the NHS was working smoothly and the structure was supportive.

Now, we hear the results of many years of bad management, services hollowed out and passed over to private firms, who don’t care about their clients; just the shareholders; and the eye watering amounts of money that gets syphoned off from the public services.

I am not trying to condone the inadequate treatment received from NHS midwifery and back up services in this particular scandal. But, bear in mind that the failings, highlighted in this report, of those workers in the wards and in aftercare, are the result of years of reduced staff levels leading to overworked operatives, less cash, and bad admin; and, for at least the last twelve years, a government that doesn’t believe that ‘service’ should be in the public domain; and is busy selling off as much as they can get away with, to big business, mainly overseas; and, often to very rich ‘chums’ from the same public school; a process I would describe as ‘honeycombing’ (check out the poem ‘Privateers’ on blog 9)

 And I’m afraid this trend is prevalent in all ‘services’ that used to be classed as ‘Public’. No wonder the workers, now accused of not doing their jobs properly, are reacting to having all the blame laid at their door.

The ‘Honeycomb’ mindset is no longer sweet; just hollow.