Mum Megan writes, “Having seen that people are having to push hard to receive the support and care they need, I thought I’d share some reflections from my recent experience in case it helps.
I’m happy to report that everything went smoothly for me this time. The first time around my daughter contracted meningitis at birth and spent 2 weeks in NICU – and until then I’d never heard of GBS. We had a healthy little boy just over 3 weeks ago.
I was admitted the morning my waters broke (17 days early) and within a couple of hours had been started on IV antibiotics and oxytocin to get contractions going – they didn’t want to leave it the usual 24 hours because of the GBS infection risk. I had 2 doses of antibiotics during labour. So it’s definitely worth pushing to go in ASAP when labour starts (especially if this is not your first labour as things can accelerate more quickly).
What this did mean was that I was pretty much bed-bound during labour. I would have preferred to be more mobile, but I was hooked up to a monitor as well as the drip. Be prepared that this may happen to you too; it’s not something I’d anticipated, and I found it a bit frustrating at times.
Baby and I were kept in for 24 hours of observation after birth so it’s worth factoring that in if you have other children – if baby is born in the evening/night you’ll probably need to arrange an extra night of childcare.
Having the sticker on the front of my notes helped, so I’d recommend getting one if you haven’t got one already (I ordered mine from the GBSS website).
Lastly, there were a couple of points at which the midwife wasn’t 100% sure of the correct next step. Also, slightly different plans mentioned in the delivery suite vs postnatal ward. I made sure they were discussing it with the doctors to be 100% sure we were following the correct protocols throughout.
Good luck! Hope that helps in some small way. Wishing you all positive experiences.”
