During, during the delivery itself she was absolutely great. I mean she was everything I wanted in my midwife. She understood what I wanted, was very hands off, very relaxed, made suggestions if she felt it would help, but it was entirely up to me. So communication up until that point was great. When it all kicked off I think they were more concerned about making sure I was stable. So initially there was pretty much no communication. It was just like, I think she did say to my husband, I’ve got to press the red button. it’s going to get very busy in here, very quickly. But keep calm. it’s under control. You’ve got no need to worry So she pre-warned him about what was going to happen. So he said that he felt as reassured as you can be when you’re wife’s passed out next to you, about what was going to happen, and I do have some recollection of after the first, when they’d got their monitoring machines up and running, so they could check my stats I do vaguely recall someone sitting next to me holding my hand, and just saying, it’s all right, it’s going to fine. Just they need to get some blood into you And I don’t actually remember all of what she said. it’s more a memory present of there being somebody next to me, kind of trying to reassure me. So there was after that initial flurry of activity, I’m fairly certain that there was someone with me, trying to keep me calm. Which I greatly appreciated. And I think it was actually my midwife. I think at that point, they had kind of let the people from upstairs, the main delivery unit had come down and taken over the case and I think she was sidelined, but her role was then about caring for my emotional needs, rather than my physical needs and they were there to look after my physical needs. That’s my understanding anyway.

And at the time I was sort of, I had no idea what was going on, but at the same time I did know what was going on, because one of my friends from my ante natal group had also had a haemorrhage and I’d literally seen her four days before, the first time after she’d had her baby, a week before, and she looked pale as anything when she walked in and we were all sat here, and everyone was going, What happened, you know, [friend] what went on And she said, I really don’t think I should tell you Because I was the last one to have the baby. I was the last one pregnant. Everyone else had had theirs. And she said, I don’t want to make it bad for [name] She was really paranoid and scared about labour. So I think she was worried about making me in the same sort of frantic state she had been and I remember taking her to the side in the kitchen and I said to [friend], I really do want to talk about it, and don’t if you don’t want to, but I’m not going to be freaked out by it and I think it’s helpful to know what to look out for

And because she’d explained to me this sensation of, you know, falling away from people and getting very faint and light headed and feeling like she was on gas and air, even though she wasn’t on gas and air. As soon as that started to happen to me, I said to my midwife, I don’t feel very well. I don’t feel quite right And I do remember saying to her, Oh I feel a bit funny And I’d even said my midwife about [friend] to her after the delivery, and I don’t know why I had been talking about my friend who’d had a haemorrhage. But I’m so grateful that she said what she did, because as soon as I stated getting exactly the same symptoms that she’d, she’d described, I was able to kind of try and tell my midwife that and she was perhaps.. And I think that’s why she’d been concerned about the fact that I hadn’t passed any water and that I was still seemingly passing clots and losing blood and she

Later she came to talk to me in the, in the post natal ward and she said that sometimes a full bladder can [pause] stop the, I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was very important to her that my bladder was emptied because that would give her a clear indication of how much blood I was losing.

My husband’s very contained. He’s very, he contains his emotions very, very well and he did that very much when it was happening. So I would never have known. He wasn’t freaking out, he wasn’t panicking, he was being calm, he was keeping me calm. He was very comforting, he was very reassuring. And I think that’s his way of dealing with the situation. I don’t think he allowed himself to think about what was going on at the time. And I think it was only afterwards when we were in the recovery room, that the emotions overcame him, and he just thought, he just thought he was going to lose me, and he was like, what would I have done? And he was terribly upset by what had happened and what he’d seen. And overjoyed at the same time that, you know, his son was here. So I think it was a whole range of experiences, emotions going through him at that time. But he’s since confessed, in that birth thing, birth story, he did say that he had a weird feeling that something was going to happen and that towards the later stage of my pregnancy, he had actually been distancing himself from the pregnancy and me to some degree because he didn’t, he was almost afraid to become attached because he had some weird feelings something was going to happen.

During the delivery itself she was absolutely great. I mean she was everything I wanted in my midwife. She understood what I wanted, was very hands off, very relaxed, made suggestions if she felt it would help, but it was entirely up to me. So communication up until that point was great. When it all kicked off I think they were more concerned about making sure I was stable. So initially there was pretty much no communication. It was just like, I think she did say to my husband, I’ve got to press the red button. it’s going to get very busy in here, very quickly. But keep calm. it’s under control. You’ve got no need to worry So she pre-warned him about what was going to happen. So he said that he felt as reassured as you can be when you’re wife’s passed out next to you, about what was going to happen, and I do have some recollection of after the first, when they’d got their monitoring machines up and running, so they could check my stats I do vaguely recall someone sitting next to me holding my hand, and just saying, it’s all right, you know, it’s going to fine. Just they need to get some blood into you And I don’t actually remember all of what she said. it’s more a memory present of there being somebody next to me, kind of trying to reassure me. So there was after that initial flurry of activity, I’m fairly certain that there was someone with me, trying to keep me calm. Which I greatly appreciated. And I think it was actually my midwife. I think at that point, they had kind of let the people from upstairs, the main delivery unit had come down and taken over the case and I think she was, sidelined, but her role was then about caring for my emotional needs, rather than my physical needs and they were there to look after my physical needs. That’s my understanding anyway.

And afterwards, rubbish. But then you know, I understand how under staffed the postnatal wards can be and I was fully prepared for that going in [baby noisy]. I had no expectation that I was going to have good post natal care in the midwifery, on the ward, through experience with my friends.

And actually I’m being harsh because whilst I was in recovery the doctor that did my internal compressions came to me, and she explained what she’d been doing and she said, My name is such and such. I, you know, was on the team recovering yourdquo; I said, Yes, you were doing my internal compressions weren’t you She said, I’m really sorry about that, but I had to do that to stem the bleeding. It was very important I mean she was lovely, she was, and I really appreciated her coming to talk to me, because she could have gone off at the end of her shift and not bothered.

And then that’s sort of when it all went blank. I said, she got up to go to the cupboard to get all of her equipment and I said, Oh it feels very strange. I can feel, I felt myself receding into myself and I had like whooshing sound in my ears, andthe next thing I knew I came round. I’d obviously passed out, and it was a bit frantic. I couldthere wasshe, I don’t know the order of events so this is going to be very out of sequence. But I know the emergency button had been pressed to get a number of people into the room, I suddenly lost a lot, a great deal amount of blood.

So you described kind of being in and out of consciousness?

Yes. And what I, there’s kind of a few key things that I remember. The first one was them saying, we need to do we know what blood type she is. We need, we need to get some blood, we need to cross whatever it is. Cross type for matching, or whatever it is they say. And I remember trying to say, because I donate blood and I know what blood group I am and I was saying, I’m O positive. I’m O positive And they couldn’t hear me. And I’m convinced that I said this. And my husband says he doesn’t recall me saying it at all. But I remember thinking oh my God they need to give me a blood transfusion. I’m losing a lot of blood.

And the other thing I remember hearing them say, Her blood pressurerdquo; They were like, because they were calling out the various statistics and once they finally got the cannulas in and then they were trying to get my blood pressure and one woman was saying, it was either 20, it was like 40 over 20. Or, it was very low, like. And I said to my husband afterwards and he said, Actually at one point they said its 40 over nothing. We can’t get the bottom whatever it is And I’m glad he didn’t, he told me that quite a long time after.