Denied painkillers, left hungry and not seeing their baby for days... how some mums are so traumatised by their NHS post natal care they say they'll NEVER have another baby

Kelly Derry, 29, was left without pain relief for hours after giving birth and was left in severe pain - until her husband brought her some:

Kelly Derry first asked the nurses on the maternity ward for more pain relief at 6am.

The 29-year-old had given birth to her daughter 18 hours earlier, but the epidural - the anaesthetising injection given to some mothers in labour - was now wearing off, and she was in terrible pain.

'When the nurses did the early morning drugs round, I asked if I could have something and they said yes, but then continued on to the next bed,' says Kelly, a retail worker from Boston, Lincolnshire.
'I knew they were very busy, so I assumed they'd come back with some tablets as soon as they could, but an hour-and-a-half passed, I was in more pain - and still no relief.

'I asked another nurse, who said she'd get me some, but she never returned. Then I asked another, and another.

'All three said they'd get me something, but no one brought any. By mid-morning, I was experiencing severe abdominal cramps.

'I knew it was normal after a natural birth, because this was my third baby, but by lunchtime — a good six or seven hours later — I couldn't take it any longer.

'I ended up texting my husband, Steve, and asked him to nip to the shops and get me some painkillers.

'He arrived half-an-hour later, our other two children in tow, with some co-codamol. He was shocked that I'd not been given anything by the nurses, but I was just relieved to see him.

'I took the tablets and, within minutes, I was feeling better. I didn't say anything to the staff about it — I just wanted to get out of there.'

Failing to prescribe basic painkillers to a new mother may seem like a rare but unfortunate oversight, and even Kelly admits she had some sympathy for the staff on the very busy postnatal ward in her local hospital.

Sadly, though, her story is far from unique. Thousands of new mothers are being left without pain relief, food and water in NHS maternity units, according to a new survey.

So dire is the situation that one in five new mothers say they were psychologically scarred by the ordeal, so much so that many have vowed never to have another child.

The survey by parenting website Mumsnet of some 1,220 new mothers found that 45 per cent of those who'd given birth in the past three years said they felt abandoned, with insufficient pain relief.







Sixty-one per cent said they could not get food, and 22 per cent were not given water to drink. A fifth were without washing facilities.

Earlier this week, other damning figures were revealed when it emerged that maternity staff are making 1,400 mistakes in NHS wards every week.

A Freedom of Information request by the BBC revealed how a shocking 305,019 errors were recorded by midwives and nurses in the past three years.

These range from records being lost to the needless deaths of mothers and babies.

Figures show that at least 259 women or babies died between 2013 and 2016 due to avoidable or unexpected circumstances.

Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, says denying mothers basic standards of care on maternity wards is just the tip of a very worrying iceberg.

'Women who've just given birth should not be going hungry or thirsty, or having to ask repeatedly for pain relief, or wash in dirty bathrooms,' she says.







Daily Mail