"Where my horror story begins is with the care given in the maternity ward afterwards"

A partner’s experience of Oxford University Hospitals Maternity Services in 2025:

My partner had a difficult C-section. It was planned but the process didn't go as smoothly as it should have. They nicked a blood vessel during the procedure and she lost a lot of blood. Then they had difficulty getting baby out and he required resuscitation immediately after being delivered. Thankfully he responded quickly and is completely fine. However, despite this the surgical team were by and large a wonderful group and I can’t fault them.

Where my horror story begins is with the care given in the maternity ward afterwards. As soon as we arrived it was clear we were going to be on our own, and this was the only reason I could see why I was allowed to stay overnight, despite a great deal of signage indicating that partners were to leave after hours.

My partner did not recover very quickly from the difficult C-section, she was very weak, pale and obviously required some additional care after having lost a significant amount of blood. Despite this, any time we buzzed for help (not at all frequently, a few times a day at most) we were fobbed off with excuses. "We are busy at the moment, someone will come back", "It's lunch time at the moment, someone will be with you in an hour".

If I hadn't been available to take care of the baby with changing or rocking or anything else, then my partner would have been expected to do this alone. She fainted once and had a second near fainting episode in the 2 days we had to stay. She required IV fluids and the needle became blocked, it took them nearly 2 hours to find someone to identify the problem and replace the drip.

The whole experience left us feeling like a burden, we will not have any more children and certainly wouldn't visit this hospital if we did.