As one would expect, shortly after Liz discovered she was pregnant, a (community) midwife was assigned to her. During the following eight(-ish) months Liz saw him (yes, not what I was expecting either) twice(!) and one of those was at the hospital after they had incorrectly told the community midwives we had already been discharged!

I think twice for any single midwife was matched by a couple of others, but stayed as the record.

Now this wouldn't be too bad if they all provided consistent advice, shared opinions on jaundice and could actually keep appointments. But it seems they can not!

Edward has had trouble putting on weight, it seems due to difficulty breast feeding. While they all seem very happy to promote breast feeding, they do not seem to be able to agree on the details - like the best positions or how long it should take or how long to spend winding, etc, etc. None of them volunteered to actually witness and check him feeding. Nor did any of them mention the option of changing to formula feeding.

They did, quite promptly, after a couple of weeks with Edward having lost so much weight and not shaken his jaundice, arrange for an appointment at the hospital for him to have a number of further tests.

They also told us that they would not discharge Edward to the health visitor until he was back to his birth weight. The trouble is that they also told us that they normally discharge people before referring them back to the hospital. And that they don't wait for birth weight, just for an improvement!

Worst still though, they didn't keep their (expected) final visit - no warning, they just didn't turn up. We had to call them to arrange another visit. At which point a midwife (who we'd seen while Liz was pregnant, but not since) turned up and said "are you able to visit the hospital today for further jaundice tests" to Liz, who was at home on her own at the time! After that fright, Liz managed to advise her that we'd already had the tests done and were just waiting for the final result. Now actually looking at our hospital notes, she changed her story too "slightly early (ie 37 week) babies often take longer to recover from jaundice, the other midwife sent you to the hospital a week too early, you really didn't need those tests"!!!

Arrgghhh!

We are now finally discharged from the midwife madness though. Our first health visitor appointment seemed to go well, but we'll have to wait and see how things last.