Oh, now, I'm different I liked it more when they left us alone to cry/bond with Ianto/relax/whatever... Or maybe I just had really annoying midwives?

Thinking about this, all I could come up with was a bunch of "Don't do"s... I didn't realise how hurt I still am by some of the things that happened... So here's my list (though it may just be me)


  • If the woman says she wants to be induced as soon as possible, do it. Even if it's policy to wait for the ultrasound results, start the induction and you can look at the results while she's in labour. I think I was kinda tricked, because they didn't tell me I wasn't allowed to get up after the gels until the third lot went in - the first after they had the u/s results.
  • If you've asked a few times during/before labour if the parents want to see and hold their baby, and they've said yes every time, they have made up their mind. You don't need to ask again after the baby is born.
  • Treat it sort of like a live birth. Yes, the baby has died, and the parents do know that, but they might benefit from things like being able to bath him/her without having to fight for it. One tiny, tiny detail that still upsets me is that they plonked Ianto on the scales, and then left him there as they wrote his weight down on the other side of the room. If it had been a live birth, he would've been held gently, picked up off the scales after his weight was taken...
  • If the woman says that she wants to leave the hospital "as late as possible" she doesn't mean that night. She wants to stay as long as she's allowed to. Especially if she knows that hospital policy is to have mums stay for two nights after baby's born and has only been there one. They told me that I could stay for as long as I wanted unless there was another woman who needed the room. I was fine with that. But then they made me leave a day too early when I didn't want to. There was no other woman, and they had at least three free beds when I left.

I'll come back to this, I have more