Birth at Queen Mary Hospital - public

C

cactus

Registered User
Hello everybody,

I have been reading through the threads describing births at the Queen Mary Hospital and since most of them are quite old (2008 or older) I thought it would be great if some of you would share their more recent stories.

Some of the older experiences seem a bit scary to me, about rude staff, midwifes breaking your water without asking first and bottle feeding the baby straight away after birth.

It sounds really scary. On the other hand I have heard things have improved a lot at Queen Mary

- episiotomies are no longer done as a standard procedure
- breast feeding and rooming in are encouraged
- different birth positions are OK


I want to have a drug and intervention free birth and as natural as possible and it would be great if some of you can share their experiences.

Did any of you have a birth plan?
Did the doctors and midwives respect your wishes?

Thanks :)
 
I had one child in 2008 and another in 2010 and not much changed between the two kids, I think it's still much the same. I've heard birth stories from people who delivered there before me, and people who have delivered there in the last year. Most are pretty standard.

Episiotomies are not routinely done - BUT they are routinely offered and even encouraged. With my first daughter, I didn't know better and said yes. It was quite painful in healing. My 2nd time around, I chose to refuse it unless medically necessary. Even though I delivered with vacuum suction, they respected that and I tore naturally. It healed much better. I think if they weren't in a rush to get her out, I may not have torn hardly at all, but I'll never know.

Breastfeeding and rooming in IS encouraged, but I found that the breastfeeding support was minimal. The nurses I had were unhelpful. I did attend a LLL meeting before delivery and took their number to the hospital and used it BOTH times. They were way more helpful, even over the phone.

Both times though my child was in special care/NICU and was fed formula against my wishes. You have to be VERY VERY clear with them because formula feeding is something that is routinely done in special care - so if they haven't gotten the message and it's that time of day, your child WILL be formula fed. If your child is not in special care, it's not an issue.

Different birth positions in my experience were not really encouraged. I was induced for medical reasons and so they were very strict on wanting to monitor the baby closely. In my 2nd delivery, I was told I wasn't allowed to MOVE at ALL. I ended up getting an epidural mainly to cope with the lack of position options. If you are not connected to any monitors/drips etc then your options are greater, but still they encourage you to stay on your back in their bed there - at least when you are in the delivery room.

I did find that they read and mostly respected my birth plan and tried to accommodate my wishes - BUT they have very set ways of doing things, so if your wishes go against that, you may be in for a bit of a fight.

All that said, if medically uncomplicated, it is possible to have a drug and intervention free birth at QMH. I would recommend getting a doula though and labouring at home as much as possible. Even after my experiences (which weren't perfect but didn't scar me too badly) I wouldn't pay the $100K to go to Matilda. If you have more questions, I can try to help :)
 
Thank you for replying to my post. Too bad not much has changed in the last few years.

The members of staff there seem to be very good at safe births but not neccessarily natural ones.

I hope I can be stern enough to make sure I get the birth I want at least to some degree. :)

Thank you again for sharing your experience.
 
It's strange how people have such different experiences....

"Some of the older experiences seem a bit scary to me, about rude staff, midwifes breaking your water without asking first and bottle feeding the baby straight away after birth"......I found the staff to be so helpful and thorough. I begged them to bottle feed my baby. I had terrible problems with breast feeding. I remember 2 lovely nurses on each side of me at 3am trying to help. It was only when they could see that I was exhausted and broke down that they gave my baby a very small amount of formula. They are very much 'pro' rooming in and breast feeding. They wouldn't let me leave the hospital until they felt comfortable that I was confident enough to breast feed. They phoned me everyday for the next week to see how I was going with it.

I can say nothing but good things about QMH
 
nzstephanie said:
It's strange how people have such different experiences....

I can say nothing but good things about QMH
Click to expand...
That's what I thought, too. I've heard from people telling me they could play their own music while giving birth and staff was very helpful, then I hear these other stories that sound like it's a completely different hospital.
Your experience sounds great! Maybe it really depends on the time of say and how busy they are.
 
cactus said:
.

The members of staff there seem to be very good at safe births but not neccessarily natural ones.
Click to expand...

A safe birth IS a good birth!

I think it is important to remember that while they try their best to adhere to patients wishes and follow what mother would ideally like their birth to be like - it is a public hospital. At one time they could have 20 women in labour. At another time they could have 2.

I found that they we sensible, straight forward and took no risks.
 
I had my baby at QMH 6 weeks ago (20 Sept). I must say I was very apprehensive at the beginning of my pregnancy, but was extremely impressed in the end. All staff involved read our birth plan and went out of their way to stick to it. Whenever something came up that they couldnt stick to they discussed all options with us and ultimately we made all of the final decisions.

I've heard that its the luck of the draw and depends on how busy they are or which shift of staff you end up dealing with, but from my personal experience I think it's changed a lot and most of the staff will really go out of their way for you most of the time. My labor didn't really go according to plan. I stopped progressing and ended up in the labor room for 26 hours before giving birth. During this time there were many shift changes and every single person that we dealt with was amazing. The hospital was extremely busy (there were 4 babies born in the room next to us during the time we were there, horrible to hear when you're experiencing intense contractions for hours but not progressing at all, ha ha!!). They didn't try to hurry us along at all. We were offered an induction a few times but it was never forced upon us. The doctor did say that if I still hadn't progressed by the next morning we would have to seriously consider it because then it could become dangerous. Luckily things started moving along just in time. When it was time to push the midwife that did the actual delivery was amazing. She told me beforehand that she didn't want to do an episiotomy (in my birth plan I said I didn't want one unless medically necessary) and would only do one if necessary. She talked me through the pushing and told me exactly when to push and how hard. She also did perineal massage. In the end I only had a minor tear and had just a few stitches. This healed very quickly and I didn't have much pain at all. I hadn't included anything about my husband cutting the umbilical cord in my birth plan, but just before my baby was born they asked us if we would like him to do it. They also asked if we had a camera and would like them to take some photo's. When my baby was born she ingested some meconium so I was not able to breast feed her right away. They still let us do some skin to skin contact and then had to take her up to the pediatric ward (she wasn't bad enough to have to go to NICU, but they did need to suction out her lungs and wanted her under observation for a while). We ended up staying in the labor ward for about 4 hours after delivery because it was a change of shift and they also needed to free up a bed in the ward. This was great because hubby could stay with me whereas in the ward he would have had to wait for visiting hours. They did have to cup-feed my baby formula for her first feeding but once I got the the ward a nurse came round to show me how to express some colostrum and they took that up to her straight away. I was able to go up to breastfeed as soon as I felt ok. Once they saw that she was ok they brought her down to me right away (about 8pm that evening, she was born at 12:22).

For me the only negative about Queen Mary was the ward afterwards. It is noisy, the food is really bad and they don't seem to ever turn the lights off. Its wasn't too bad though, I took my own food and my hubby also brought when he came to visit. We requested an early discharge and were able to leave the next day, so we only stayed in that ward for 1 night.

I'd definitely go to Queen Mary again if I have another baby. Let me know if you have any questions, you're welcome to PM me.
 
Thanks for sharing. That sounds like a really good experience! :-)
I'm glad they didn't push you into being induced even after such a long time.
 
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