Queen Mary Hospital Question URGENT question..

K

kharel

Registered User
Hello,

I have just called Annerley midwives and they told me that at Queen Mary Hospital the labour and delivery ward are seperate and that men can not come into the laboru ward with you??? Does anyone know if this is true and if so how was your birth and what did you do?

Annerly offer a doular system where a midwife comes to your house and does the labour with you and then you go to hospital and deliver the baby.

I am terrified about beign in labour anyway and the only person I really want there is my husband??

Any advice would be welcome as I have no idea what to do and I am quite scared about this.....
 
it is true. you go into the regular ward. and when you are "ready" they move you to the delivery ward. while in the regular ward, hubby is only allowed during visiting hours. however, you can leave the ward to walk around and many women do. they walk the halls with their hubbies.

i would venture to say that most women in hk deliver through the public system and it does work well, but some of their rules are a little strict. this is one of them.
 
What is the labour room like? Is it all open plan where you can see many other people? Can you walk the halls while you are in labour with your husband?
 
Hi,

I just did a tour of QMH last weekend - I'm due to deliver there in July.

Basically, it works like this;

1. You arrive and are assessed by the nurse midwife. Your husband waits in the waiting room. You may be given a bed in the 'pre labour' area - basically a waiting ward while they assign you a bed etc.

2. The next step depends on what stage of labour you are in. If you are 3-4cms with regular contractions, you are most likely put straight into a delivery room. This room is private (i.e. 1 bed) and this is where your baby will be born. You cannot see or hear anyone else in labour. Whilst you are in this room, your husband can be with you the whole time. There is a CD player, birthing ball, baby bed and birthing stool in the room.
If the delivery rooms are all full, they will make you wait a bit longer in the labour ward.

3.The labour ward is the general ward, where you are until you have progressed enough for the delivery room. There are 6-8 beds. This is the ward where you will also return to once you have had your baby. This area is off limits to the husband apart from visiting hours.

4. Your husband can visit the hospital at any time, provided he waits in the waiting room, and you must be able to walk outside the ward to meet him. Unfortunately you can't take the baby outside the ward, so your husband can only see the baby during visiting hours. This in my opinion is the only real drawback of the public system.

Annerley midwives will reccommend you stay at home as long as possible, thereby when you get to hospital you will go directly into a delivery room and bypass the ward. Having a doula at home will help you through the first stage of labour and they will know when you need to go to hospital.

I reccommend booking a tour of QMH, you can see everything for yourself and ask as many questions as you like. We felt much better having seen it all for ourselves.

Good Luck!
 
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Just a quickie and not to worry anyone unduely, but...

A friend of mine recently gave birth in QM and had quite a horrific time.

You can hear other women delivering in other rooms, my friend could clearly hear another woman in labour in the room next to hers and after it had all gone silent she asked the nurse who just came into her room if she had had a girl or a boy. The answer was simply 'Still birth'. Not the most sensitive of nurses...

There were also lots of issues with visitors and such, her mum how had travelled from the US was not allowed in at all and spent 24 hours waiting in the waiting room only to be told that she couldn't even see the baby once born.

Then baby was kept in the neonatal unit for no reason for a week - honestly - baby was perfectly fine and healthy nothing wrong and mum and dad could only see baby during visiting hours.

Just to prepare you. Go armed with information and expect the worse, then hopfully you will get the best.
 
Hi- I was recently in Queen Mary at 28 weeks with contractions.

My first son was born at Matilda, so this was my first experience of being an in patient at a government hospital.

I have to say I was very impressed with the level of medical care.

I was very fortunate in that I was in a delivery room the whole time...I suppose because I was an 'emergency' case and they were worried my baby was going to come very early......my husband was allowed in the room 24 hrs a day, day and night! They were strict about him wearing the surgical gown and hat etc, and wouldn't let him eat in there....but they let him come and go and bring me food etc.

Fortunetly with rest and medicine my contractions were stopped and our baby didn't com early.

However I was very impressed with the doctors and nurses.
And should I end up at QMH again, I have to say I wouldn't mind.

And at the end we were presented with a bill of $150!!!!!
 
I just gave birth at QMH 2 months ago and also had a fantastic experience. I was very impressed with everything, especially the treatment I got from the nurses/midwives. They followed my birth plan down to the last point.

I did not hear other women at all while i was in the labor ward. I just asked my husband if he heard others and he said yes but I was in no state to notice anybody else!

As mentioned above, your husband can be with you the whole time while you are in the labor ward. Its the pre-labor ward that he has to remain outside for. In my case, they put me in the pre-labor ward when I arrived since I was not dilated at all, but as soon as I went into active labor, I was moved and my husband joined me. BTW, only one person is allowed to be with you and they assume that is your husband.

As for visiting hours, when I was there there was only a 6-8pm visiting hour time which was a pain but I had 2 people visit me one night and 5 people the next with no problem at all. Also, when they first move you to the maternity ward after birth, your husband can go with you and they seem to let him stay for as long as we wanted.

Overall, it was a very positive experience and I would do it again!
 
I've written about my Queen Mary experience in a previous post. Would like to add the Doctors at Tsan Yuk or Queen Mary do not discuss your or your baby's condition with you unless you ask them. Even after asking, I found them very reluctant to share what was wrong with my daughter/ the swelling on her head and why she needed to be kept in Special Care Unit for a week. That left us wondering and worried sick the whole time. All they said was she had a bacterial infection. They kept her file under strict supervision and we were not even allowed to look into it. We did try sneaking into it when we thought no one was looking to know the name of the infection and reason for the swelling on her head but were reprimanded by the nurse there for doing that. I mean she?s my daughter and I have every right to know what's wrong with her, right????? Also they didn't give us any detail of her infection, what medicines they gave her the whole week, what tests they ran on her, what precautions we needed to take in future etc etc. All they said was she was alright now and we could take her home. Supposedly one has to submit a form/ fee or something to get full discharge summary which takes a few weeks.
 
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funny... i was hospitalised 13 times over 2 pregnancies, and i ALWAYS looked at my charts. never had a problem with drs or nurses saying i shouldn't.

i also asked hundreds of questions. at one point, the head of the high risk team took almost 45 minutes to answer my list of questions, which i wrote down and i also wrote down all of his answers... and that wasn't even when i was admitted, it was during a "check-up", which i had every 2 weeks during both pregnancies.
 
forgot to mention that my first birth there was anything but wonderful. it was awful.

had no choice and returned for my second. this one was a million times better!

if my hubby agrees to a third time, it will be back there for me again, without batting an eye.

i guess what you can glean from this thread is that every person's experience is different, some great, some good, some ok, some bad and some terrible.
 
Cara, I was able to look at my file (Which was placed next to my bed before the doctor's visit every morning and taken away later on) but not allowed to look at my daughter's file.
We saw the doc looking into her case once after waiting for 2 days since he was very busy. All he said in a hurry was that she had a bacterial infection, was being given antibiotics and we shouldn't worry too much. The nurses gave us some information sparingly on her current status only on being asked.
I understand this might be due to the fact that the staff there is very overworked but that is no excuse for not letting us access to her file or not giving us time to talk about her or giving us details of her entire treatment. Or is it?
 
Hi everyone,

Gosh so many different stories to take in that it seems it is down to personal experience.. I just hope everythign is ok with me adn the baby adn I will discharge myself within 24 hours - legally they can not keep you so I will get out fast and rest at home which I think will be nicer.

I have heard many great things about the care and so I hope to have a good experience there. As private is just not a financial option I will just make it work.

Thank you all so so much
 
unless of course you end up with a c-section, then you'd be crazy to go home after 24 hours!

geomum, i agree. i would have kicked up such a fuss if they didn't let me look at my child's file... i don't blame you in the least.

i'm glad your little one is ok now.
 
A lot of the bad stories you hear about public hospitals are to do with expectations. Usually concerning who is allowed in the room with you (like the story above about the mother flying in from the US), and the facilities, as well as the level of disclosure when it comes to the mother and baby's health.

You need to go in there with the expectation that you're in another country, and this is the way they do things. It is not the same as a private suite in the US, or a birthing room in Australia, you're in Hong Kong and they're not going to change their systems to suit other cultures.

So, don't necessarily assume your husband will be with you all the time. Don't assume anyone else will be able to be with you at all, or see the baby after it's born. Your husband has to leave after the baby is born. If you have other children, they can't come and see you or visit the baby.

Like someone said, try to stay home as long as you can, if possible. Then you won't be in the hospital for the long early stages of labour, potentially on your own. Be persistent with asking questions, if you don't feel like you're getting enough information.

I really dislike a lot of the approaches to birth in HK public hospitals but that's too bad, I have chosen to give birth here and all I can do is try to make my experience as good as it can be within the limitations they give. Swapping horror stories is mostly only good for stressing out mothers-to-be who are nervous enough already.
 
Hi Kharel,

You said that legally, they cannot keep you in hospital and you're going to discharge yourself within 24hours. We really would like to do that too and actually asked the nurse if we could discharge ourselves early, if everything was ok. She said the mother can go but they will keep the baby there?! Do you (or anyone) know if this is true? I wouldn't want to stay in hospital for any longer than necessary, especially with the tight visiting hours, but leaving the baby in the hospital without me is definitely not an option!
 
I had my daughter at QMH in March this year, she was born at 9pm and daughter and I both left QMH the following lunch time. We would have left sooner but they insist you and baby see doctor, which seemed fair. They were surprised we wanted to leave but I was insistant!
Good luck!
 
hkaussie, I would say exactly the same - however, from numerous stays in QMH, I can say pretty certainly that the treatment dished out to non-Chinese is very different. If my husband was there for 5 minutes past visiting hours, he was told to get out, let the local patients had people coming and going at all hours, with no questions asked.
The lack of communication is staggering - and it's not because of 'the way they do things' - it's because of an overwheling attitude amongst staff that Western = spoiled and rich. On several occasions I got asked questions like "Why aren't you at Matilda?" (because we couldn;t afford it in a million years), "Why don't you ask your helper to do it?" (We didn;t have one), or the best one was when the doctor came around with a group of students, didn't ven look at me - just pulled off my blanket and started talking to the students. I was quite upset at this, and I noticed that when the students visited every other patient in the room (all Chinese) - he would speak a few words first. He spoke excellent English - he just couldn't be bothered.

When you sign your baby into special care, you sign a form that says the hospital then decides what happens. I had to fight two peds to tel me why my child had a dozen blood tests in half an hour, why he was still in the SCU give nights after his 24 hour jaundice treatment had finished: I found out at the end that they were taking extra blood for 'stud' - which I wouldn't have minded if it was one extra prick - but it was more like a dozen. They also kept him up there becasue the 'paperwork' was too 'complicated' to transfer him back to the ob ward. Yet the Chinese lady in teh next bed, whose daughter also had 24 hour jaundice treatment, was back the next day. Go figure. I read his chart - nothing else to keep him up there but laziness on the part of staff.


What was worse - I complained and complained about pain in my IV site(s). One nurse told me to "be quiet - cannot hurt so much". I had a severe infection, and still have a numb patch on that wrist -nearly three years later. The last 36 hours I was in hospital, I didn't get to speak to a doctor about it, and the nurses refused to call someone. I was discharged with a fever, and red line up my arm from the infection. I was at the private GP's ASAP for the medication I should have been prescribed before I left.
The standard of care is great for surgery - for medicine and after care, it is simply shocking. But for those of us who cannot afford the fees for private hospitals, (or who simply need a level of surgical care which only the public system can provide) - there is no other option.

At my sic week check up, the doctor basically called me a liar - that if I had an infection, they would have noticed and taken care of it. What a load of c**p.

So if we have a second, I will go back to QMH, but I will be out of the minute I can be, and go to get checked out by doctors who fulfil ALL their professional obligations.

Harsh - but true!
 
all in all - QM sounds very efficient and they have good stats to back them up. I personally think I would much prefer to be in QM in HK than back in a public hospital in my own country.

i selected Matilda upon first hearing that I was pregnant but frankly speaking, I am in the throws of changing my mind to to QM. afterall, it if there is an emergency, i am going to end up there anyway.

aussiemum is right as in due july etc... your experience is all about expectation management and if something serious happens ie bubs is sick for a week etc etc and you are not getting info, i would sincerely recommend that you dont let 'no comment' be the answer.

For me, I take responsibility for the amount of information I have/get. this might sound harsh but i would prefer to be known at the crazy chick yelling down the halls than not knowing what is happening with my bubs over a long period of time.

good luck to everyone soon to give birth. may it be everything that your heart desires it to be and may the sight of your bub be bigger than your wildest dreams!
 
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