Nicky’s Experience: “I waited nearly two days for a labour room”
After discovering she was pregnant with twins, Nicky was excited to share the news with her family. However, at a routine scan at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Nicky was devastated to learn that her babies had no heartbeats.
Nicky later miscarried naturally, and describes her experience.
“It took a long time - about 3 weeks that I was bleeding. And then they asked me to go back just to check that. There they checked that one baby had passed, but the other had not and that I needed to have a DNC operation”.
At Queen Elizabeth hospital, Nicky waited anxiously for her procedure. When the wait time neared 12 hours, Nicky became distressed.
“If you have to wait that length of time it can be quite frightening, and obviously it's a very stressful experience. I was alone.”
To help support her, staff arranged for Nicky’s partner to wait with her, helping her to feel more at ease.
“Someone said that my partner could come in towards the end because I was waiting for such a long time. So that was nice. I was able to have him come in later in the day”.
After a couple of months, Nicky had another pregnancy, but tests later confirmed that the baby had a genetic condition incompatible with life after birth, leading her to make the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy at 16 weeks. Nicky turned to her local hospital, hoping to get an urgent appointment. At Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Nicky waited optimistically for an appointment but when no appointment became available, a midwife referred her to an abortion clinic, knowing that Nicky needed to have the procedure before she was 20 weeks pregnant.
This left Nicky feeling scared - she didn’t know this service and felt that there was a lot of stigma attached to abortion clinics.
“you're really afraid, obviously, of what's going to happen to you. You hear all the people outside protesting against abortion. So, when you're in a fragile situation like that, it can feel really uncomfortable” Nicky explains.
At the clinic, Nicky describes the care she received from her midwife and how this left her feeling guilty and anxious about terminating her pregnancy.
“She said to me,’ this is solely your decision and no one else's decision’. And I understand that that's just the language that they use. But I think that language should be changed and there should be more of a conversation. Because with that scenario, of course, it wasn't a regular termination out of choice, it was a termination because of a very serious health issue, and I felt extreme amounts of guilt because I didn't want to do it”.
Nicky left the clinic feeling unsupported. She wasn’t offered any support to cope with her devastating loss, “I didn’t get any leaflets or information on how to cope with my grief”. Reflecting on this experience, Nicky shares how she now has, “a lot of emotional trauma around that day”.
A year later, Nicky was excited to learn that she was pregnant again. However, during a routine clinic check-up at 32 weeks, Nicky’s midwife noticed her blood pressure was very high and told Nicky she would need medication to help stabilise this. Despite warning her midwife about her medication allergies, Nicky reacted poorly to the prescribed medication. This left Nicky very distressed about the safety of her baby which only worsened her blood pressure.
When Nicky’s condition didn’t stabilise, she was admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital. During her hospital stay, Nicky describes feeling scared and alone, and needing more support and reassurance from staff. “Obviously everyone's coming to check blood pressure and do the medical checks but there needs to be a more human approach to caring for people who are so vulnerable. Nothing's more unfair or more scary than when you are pregnant because you're so afraid that something might happen to you or your baby. Especially, because of what happened to me before”.
When Nicky’s doctors decided to induce labour, fearing for the safety of her and her baby, she was faced with yet more uncertainty and distress. The hospital didn’t have a labour room available, leading to a nearly 40-hour wait for Nicky to have her baby.
“I waited nearly 40 hours, nearly two days, for a labour room, which was really awful because at that point I was contracting, and my waters had broken”.
When a room finally became available, it was very cold, causing her severe discomfort.
“I was trembling so much because I was so cold and the pain of everything that was going on and the fear, I clamped my jaw so hard I cracked my teeth, my teeth broke at the back”.
Despite her discomfort, Nicky feared speaking up. She felt that if she complained about the room, staff may have made her wait for another room, further delaying her delivery.
After giving birth, Nicky was moved into a room in ward 7. To make her more comfortable, staff fitted her room with a spare bed so her partner could stay with her. However, at midnight, a night nurse woke them up to move them to another room without any explanation, leaving Nicky feeling disregarded and unsupported.
“A lady came in and said, you have to move to another room. And I said Oh, we're just all sleeping here. Please, can we stay? And she said no. You have to move into another room. So, we had to get all my stuff and move to another room which was really stressful because obviously, I was extremely unwell after my caesarean and with preeclampsia”.
After a week, Nicky was well enough to be discharged from the hospital but didn’t receive any advice or information on how to cope with her traumatic birthing experience, leaving her to try and find support on her own. Through a counselling service, Nicky and her partner have slowly come to terms with what happened to them.
*The name of the abortion clinic was not disclosed by Nicky
Provider Response:
Response from Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust
We are very sorry to learn of Nicky's maternity experience. We would like to offer Nicky a meeting to apologise for her experience and review her care individually to fully understand her experience and improve our service.
