She made my first days with my first born a joy. That was eight years ago and the midwife has moved on. Three weeks ago, I gave birth to twins in the same London teaching hospital, under the same practice. But this second tale of maternity care is not so happy. In less than a decade, the service I took for granted for my first born had collapsed.
Many women feel as if they have gone through a conveyor-belt birth experience.
My experience in the labour ward was exemplary. But the moment I was wheeled out of the delivery room and into the packed post-natal ward, it was as if I was being taken from a place where I was the centre of attention to a place where I had to be processed and moved on. The conveyor belt had begun to roll. It began with my inability to get breakfast. I had been in the ward for less than two hours and my legs were still dead from the epidural.