"I used the birth after thoughts service where I was made to feel like I was mental"

A mother’s experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity services in 2018:

I went in one evening at 39 weeks to be checked for reduced movements and report of pain when touching my bump, I was checked and sent home and told everything was fine.

This was the start of placental abruption, I had no idea and the next day when my waters had started to leak I was called in for an induction which went from 0-100 and was told this was totally normal, after 3 hours of back to back contractions and complaining many times that this was in fact not normal, I was ignored until I started haemorrhaging. To then be told, ‘what a way to skip the queue’.

I had an emergency c section 10-15 minutes later, where I was told I was lucky, ‘the baby was nearly a goner’.

After this traumatic experience I used the birth after thoughts service where I was made to feel like I was mental for being diagnosed with PTSD.

I was handed some notes, which I looked at a few years later, where all the times for each step and check throughout me arriving and having my daughter were all wrong. They had her down for arriving after 8am, she was born at 6:32am.

I would never have another child after this.