Daily Archives: July 2, 2009

Super-hospital, pah

Super-hospital, pah

Yesterday saw the opening of the brand new “super hospital” next to the existing “not so super hospital” or, in fact, “very shit hospital”, Queen Alexandra in Cosham, near Portsmouth.  It’s been a long time in the making but there it is, all spanky and new with its own helipad and everything.  Doubtless, though, the multi-storey car park won’t yet be open and there will still only be 20 spaces in the car park and massive queues to get one.  And fisticuffs. (I don’t know this for sure, by the way, I’m purely speculating based on my sadly extensive experience of QA)  Now, while this used to be just an irksome reality forcing you to leave home some 4 hours before an appointment or before you were off to visit someone, it’s now a bit more of a worry.  Because they’ve moved ALL maternity services to QA now for the whole of Portsmouth.  How many babies are going to be born on London Road because of the traffic?  It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Of course, there’s every chance they’ve sorted the parking and it’s all fine and dandy (and probably cripplingly expensive).  But I’m still a bit worried about getting there.  For those of you that don’t know Portsmouth, it’s a small island city, very densely populated and with only three routes off it.  The QA hospital is just north of the island and fairly close to two of those routes.  The problem is the traffic.  There’s far too much of it.  If anything happens on one of those routes the whole city grinds to a halt.  I’ve seen it and it isn’t pretty.  So, if you go into labour in rush hour and there’s been an accident on the M275 you’re buggered.  Or you’d better hope they send you a helicopter.  Except they won’t be able to land unless you live near the common, the beach or one of the parks.  You could, feasibly, get the train to Cosham, but then you’d have to walk halfway up Portsdown Hill while you suffer a contraction every minute or your waters break all over the place.  I don’t think you’d make it to be honest.

Anyway, it wasn’t really that I wanted to talk about and I’m worried I’ve now terrified my heavily pregnant friend into packing up her stuff and camping outside QA until she goes into labour.  Sorry, Mrs B.  No, what I really wanted to talk about was the maternity services themselves which have now fully relocated to QA from St Mary’s Hospital (which is actually in Portsmouth and you could argue, therefore, more convenient to the people of Portsmouth).  Thus far I have had three babies, all at St Mary’s Hospital.  In fact, I was born there myself.  So was my husband.  So were most of my friends.  Portsmouth’s a bit like that.  Babies 1 and 2, my lovely boys, were born in 1997 and 1999 and were fairly straight forward, no worries during the pregnancy and pretty standard births.  That bit really hurts by the way.  I mean REALLY.  I wasn’t there for long and even went home the same day when number 2 son was born.  The midwives seemed OK, only one of them was scary and the only problem I really had was that number 2 son was born when their shifts changeover in the morning.  To her credit the midwife stayed for as long as she could but as soon as he was out and OK all I saw was her dust as she hotfooted it home to bed.

But then, at the end of 2007, I got pregnant with Poppy.  Or the Popster as we like to call her.  I am lucky in the respect that I got pregnant very quickly but I suspect that’s where my luck ran out because Miss P was a bit of a problem child from the off.  What a monkey.  Now, in my limited experience as a reluctant pregnant woman (reluctant in the sense that I suffer rather a lot with stupid things like migraines and swollen ankles and have a bit of a tendency to moan about it a lot) I’d noticed that things keep changing.  They change their minds every year about what you can and can’t eat, how long you should breastfeed (I think that’s until you die of old age now) and now when you should have scans.  They give you more now, it’s really quite good apart from the fact you have to pay for the prints.  Pfft.

But how, and where you see your midwife also seems to change, especially if you’ve changed doctors in the interim period.  Since it had been 8 or 9 years since I’d had a baby I’d most definitely changed doctor and was a bit bewildered by the procedure.  There didn’t seem to be one.  Which is why I found myself calling the community midwives number as directed by my doctor to try and get an appointment, only to find myself being treated in a very dismissive and extremely rude way by the woman who answered the phone.  She might as well have told me to fuck off.  Several phone calls later and I’d sorted out an appointment, with the rude woman.  You really shouldn’t ever piss off a pregnant woman because I was gunning for her by this stage.  I knew perfectly well that it was the same woman on the phone but I declared that I’d like to make a complaint about my ill-treatment from the VERY rude woman to whom I had previously spoken and I demanded an appointment.  She was suitably sheepish and even admitted it was her I had spoken to but that she wasn’t being rude.  Yeah right.  The reason I’m telling you this rather long-winded tale is that the same thing happened to my friend today.  She only has a couple of weeks left and is suffering with pain in her hands so her own midwife gave her specific instructions to call the hospital to make an appointment asap and get it treated.  The treatment she received by the woman on the phone was atrocious, she was told there was nothing they could (or perhaps would) do this close to the birth and that she was blocking the phone line for people who were in labour.  In other words, fuck off.  My friend was very upset, as you would be.  She was only following instructions.  I was upset for her, which is why I’m writing this today.  They may have a shiny new hospital to play with but it seems they don’t have the shiny new attitudes to go with it.

Anyway, back to the Popster.  At the time I was due a scan they changed how they were done so instead of the old dating scan which didn’t show you much you now get a detailed scan where, if you want to know, they will even tell you the sex of your baby.  At mine they told me that my placenta was low-lying and that I’d need an extra scan later on to make sure it had grown out of the way.  I didn’t think much of it and didn’t really worry about it.  Only when I went back several weeks later it seemed it hadn’t moved and was blocking the pesky baby’s exit route.  Arse.  The midwife doing the scan told me I’d have to have a caesarean and seemed amazed I hadn’t been bleeding.  I must say, I was pretty alarmed.  I came home, looked up the condition they’d diagnosed, placenta praevia, and was even more alarmed.  It’s not nice and can be pretty dangerous.  Great.  The hospital had booked me an appointment with a consultant some 2 weeks later (!) and this, sadly is where things became a little bit farce like, all because of a tiny typo.  You see the midwife had accidentally left the V off the roman numeral IV making it look as though I had a mild case instead of a very severe one.  Oh dear.  I saw the consultant and was a little bit bewildered.  He said I didn’t need to worry, it was only a grade 1 praevia and there was a good chance I’d be able to have a normal birth.  I was certain the midwife had said I would HAVE to have a c-section but did I say anything?  Did I?  No, of course not.  I’d kind of expected him to be looking at stills from the scan while I was there.  Silly me.

Another scan was booked for a couple of weeks later, I saw the same midwife and she confirmed that it was very serious and that the slight communication problem had massively played down my condition.  She was still amazed that I hadn’t been bleeding, and I was still alarmed.  What I should have been doing was taking it very easy.  What I had been doing was as much as I could.  Oops.  I’d even, earlier on, attempted a 3 mile run.  This resulted in much puking.  I am an idiot.  A new appointment was made with the consultant, this time only 3 days later.  Only I never made it because I ended up in hospital the day before because of bleeding.  I was 35 weeks pregnant and a little bit scared.  And they wouldn’t let me go home and made me wear very sexy anti-embolism stockings.  The mistake had been realised and now they were going to make sure I did take it easy in the hope that they could give me an elective c-section at 37 weeks instead of an emergency one at any time.  Luckily I held on.  And, for all the faults of the vile woman on the end of the phone, the staff were fantastic and I was extremely well looked after.  I had the best of everything, anaesthetist, surgeon etc.  I was just bored out of my tiny mind for 2 weeks waiting for it to happen and always on tenterhooks for an emergency.  I read books, watched movies on my laptop, even surfed tinternet a bit and watched the chavs who were outside smoking for the rest of the time.  There were loads.  Most of them were pregnant.

I had my c-section under general anaesthetic and it was horrible, I woke up groggy and in lots of pain but the morphine was marvellous.  I’ll never understand why people would choose a c-section but hey.  Popster was fine, very puffy looking, but fine.  After 2 weeks stuck in hospital I was determined to get out as quickly as possible and went home after 2 days.  Result.  Poppy will be a year old at the end of this month and I can’t believe how quickly the time’s gone.  She’s still a cheeky monkey.

Three wise monkeys?

Three wise monkeys?

I feel I must apologise if I’ve gone into any gory detail, I really am not one of those kind of mothers.  But I do feel compelled to tell my good friend Mrs B not to worry about the staff, you came across one idiot but the vast majority are great and you’ll be fine in the spanky new hospital.  They’ll look after you and baby Tiberius very well. :o)

NB The baby won’t really be called Tiberius.  Or will it???