Mail Online: NHS maternity services in meltdown: A former midwife reveals how understaffed wards are sinking into chaos

 

“Clutching her husband’s hand and with agony and exhaustion etched on her face, a young woman struggled into a room in the maternity unit where I worked.

 

She was in the early stages of labour with her first baby, she was terrified, in excruciating pain and desperate for any crumb of support…

 

…It’s a huge relief to have left the NHS. As an independent midwife in Northwich, Cheshire, I am finally able to help women the way they deserve.

 

Calm, supported and not rushed, my mothers give birth in six to seven hours. In the units where I worked, the average labour was ten to 14 hours.

 

I feel guilty about the women I let down as an NHS midwife. Weak and in pain, they don’t have the knowledge or strength to stand up for themselves.

 

Instead, they end up being patronised by doctors and bullied by midwives into taking drugs they don’t want.

 

But what makes me most sad and angry is that those hospital staff  –  everyone from managers down  –  are taking advantage of women when they are at their most vulnerable.

 

Interview: TESSA CUNNINGHAM