"The midwife told me it was “all in my head” and left me for six hours in agony with a hugely full bladder."

A mother’s experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2023:

In 2023 my bladder stopped working during the birth of my daughter and a catheter was placed following the birth. I was transferred to the maternity ward on level 5 and a trial without catheter was performed and I was still unable to pass urine even though I was desperate to.

The midwife told me it was “all in my head” and left me for six hours in agony with a hugely full bladder. She did not follow procedure and scan my bladder.

When the next midwife came on shift, she saw my pain and distress and put the catheter in at which point over a litre of urine came out which I could not have intentionally held. This stretching of my bladder caused permanent damage to it.

I also had an episiotomy during birth and was in excruciating pain post birth and was kept in hospital for two weeks for pain management. The doctors gave a strict pain relief schedule which was not followed by the midwives at all. The pain management was so poor that I was frequently in the worst pain I have ever experienced (worse than my 24 hour induced labour) and they would leave me for hours despite my begging and crying for help.

They would end up having to give me morphine and it would take hours to then get back on top of the pain, only for this to happen over and over again every day for two weeks. It was literally like being tortured.

During this time I received undermining comments from midwives like “I had an episiotomy and mine didn’t hurt this much” and “you must have a low tolerance to pain”.

I have since found out that I actually had an infection at the site of my episiotomy which caused the terrible pain. I was never told this during my stay and I don’t believe I was given antibiotics either. The only reason I discovered this is because it was in my notes when I recently had my second baby.

It was an absolutely hellish experience that left me with permanent physical damage as well as PTSD.