"There was a complete lack of respect and decency towards us"

A father's experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2025:

Our newborn twins have been clearly unsettled during the night, displaying several hunger cues for extended periods of time throughout the night - every time we've asked for feed (donated breast milk), we were made feel like it was trouble - also she reduced the amount she was willing to give us and told my wife she should be pumping instead of getting fed from staff so often.

We have advised her that she was pumping as much as possible, and doing her best but simply did not have enough milk yet to feed 2 babies (which i believe is completely normal considering she was only 2 days post partum with her first ever pregnancy), but she proceeded to tell my wife that she needs to do more and be better at pumping (despite never actually taking the time to observe us pumping/hand expressing or offered any support or solutions to us, new parents).

She also mentioned she calculated the amount of feeds we asked throughout the day and she was saying we were asking more than what is the usual being given to our newborns. They were hungry - we have no control over the amount of milk they should be taking. But nevertheless, the babies were also patients that should be given with what they need.

We also asked for pillows for my wife’s swollen legs, she just said that there are other women who MIGHT need pillows so she refused to give us any - there were lots of discharges on that day and yet she did not even attempt to look for a single pillow to help a patient in need.

This interaction has caused my wife to break down in tears and having terrible feelings about herself not being able to provide for the needs of her own babies.

All of this happened and the refusal to issue feed while our baby girl was under phototherapy for jaundice - wherein feeding would be a great protective factor in her recovery but we were denied it throughout the night!

It was heartbreaking for me to witness all this and nobody should be treated like this in the NHS - completely against your core values!

There was a complete lack of respect and decency towards us throughout the whole night - only because we were asking for more milk for our hungry babies.