Dire times at birth unit
Instead of looking forward to her Christmas baby, Frankie Herrington is plagued with anxiety as she faces the prospect of giving birth at Hutt Hospital’s troubled maternity unit.
Harrowing stories continue to emerge from former patients and midwives, outlining a litany of issues, including insufficient equipment and inadequate resourcing.
A tense public meeting was held on Wednesday night in Petone, where a succession of midwives condemned their workplace and the standard of care it provides to women in labour.
The revelations led Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter to call a meeting with Hutt Valley District Health Board chief executive Fionnagh Dougan next week.
The DHB is actively recruiting to fill five midwifery vacancies and is setting up a continuity of care team which includes another four midwives to support women birthing in the unit who do not have a lead maternity carer.
A holiday staffing shortage has been compounded by the closure of Lower Hutt’s Te Awakairangi Birthing Centre from December 20 to January 6.
Herrington, who was ‘‘appalled’’ by what she heard at the meeting, was among the host of pregnant women affected by the centre’s closure, meaning she was likely to deliver her baby girl in the hospital.
‘‘To think that my choice had been taken away, and my only option is Hutt Hospital is pretty alarming for someone who is already under a lot of pressure with their first child,’’ Herrington said.
Her pre-natal class took place straight after the public meeting – and there were ‘‘a lot of really upset women’’ in the room.
‘‘I know there were a few tears . . . I am pretty appalled that this has been such a longstanding problem,’’ Herrington said.
She hoped to go into labour early so she could deliver in the centre and avoid the hospital altogether.
Lower Hutt Parents Centre secretary Meg Waghorn gave birth to her second child in July and said midwives were run off their feet.
Waghorn’s spell in hospital coincided with the release of a damning external review into the DHB’s women’s health services, highlighting a ‘‘chronic workforce deficiency’’.
‘‘Hutt maternity suite is quite old and run down and it actually isn’t that clean. They have a birthing mat you can use and my mum went to get that out for me and it had old blood on it. The midwife was mortified,’’ Waghorn said.
‘‘They don’t actually have enough support even to clean birthing suites, so that kind of task is falling to midwives . . . the shower in the birthing suite was broken.
‘‘In some ways they are superficial things but it is obviously not what you would hope for in a New
‘‘I just felt so alone. It felt like they cared but they didn’t have time to care so they just left me to it.’’
Jessica Smeets
Zealand hospital,’’ Waghorn said.
The unit was now in the process of being refurbished, including the construction of a new birthing room, Dougan confirmed on Thursday.
Jessica Smeets’ experience of the hospital’s maternity unit at around the same time as Waghorn has made her ‘‘think twice’’ about having a second child.
The 27-year-old Upper Hutt woman had an elective caesarean section as baby daughter Zaria was in breech position.
While the birth went well, Smeets experienced long periods without being checked on by staff.
The care was so poor, she discharged herself after three nights.
‘‘They were so under-staffed that they couldn’t look after me and they weren’t giving me my drugs. I ended up being in pain, because no-one was coming in to check in on me.
‘‘Being a first-time mum, I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t even taught how to hold her to breastfeed or anything like that.
‘‘I just felt so alone. It felt like they cared but they didn’t have time to care so they just left me to it,’’ Smeets said.