Share review of Community Services - The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Community Services - The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust 2017-07-18 Person 4 5 0

Great service and care received. Very informative and organised midwives. Our main midwife had a great sense of humour which put myself an my husband at ease. The student midwives were very pleasant and friendly and seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Overseen by our main midwife/present. My husband felt at ease with all midwifes and that he was able to ask anything which I was initially worried about as I understand that its the mother who is going through pregnancy but the dads are nervous too (mainly first time dads) and sometimes feel pushed out as they cant feel the baby move till almost mid pregnancy. The only constructive feedback I can think of giving is possibly giving working mothers (or those not on maternity leave yet) the earliest and latest appointment times first as I found it stressful already trying to do training, handovers and fit all my work in, when working on the other side of the city. So leaving work midday to rush across and then run back made me feel very stressed, plus I felt guilty for having various other appointments, sometimes on the same day (once there were 3 on the same day) and although my employers were very sympathetic, I worried how it made me come across professionally. Some communication between health visitors or centres would have been great. Also, some of the classes were very late in the pregnancy when you are feeling most exhausted. A lot of the other women gave birth before they had a chance to finish the courses (Baby + Beyond) One commented she hadn't had a health visitor visit her home or received the babys red health book and she was 38 weeks pregnant. We were sometimes offered different appointment times, but other times there wasn't much choice. It was harder for my husband to get out of work, and he wanted to come to all appointments (as I had fainted in one of my appointments as he was worried about me going alone) Availability, I understand, is not in the midwives control. Hope this helps on some level. Regards