Max Pemberton: How did we allow maternity care to become so broken that the miracle of birth is now fraught with danger and fear?

Max Pemberton: How did we allow maternity care to become so broken that the miracle of birth is now fraught with danger and fear? By Max Pemberton Published: 02:19, 20 May 2024 | Updated: 02:20, 20 May 2024 e-mail View comments The birth of a new baby should be a time of joy and celebration and yet, increasingly, women are finding it one of lasting trauma and distress. Talk to mothers today and you'll find that so many of them either had, or knows someone who has had, an atrocious experience giving birth on an NHS maternity ward. And I'm not just talking about those tragic cases where women haemorrhaged to death or serious complications occurred during the birth that left the baby disabled.

Far too often women on maternity wards are viewed as an irritation by the staff — something that gets in the way of the smooth running of the service, forgetting that the service is there to provide care. At their most nervous and vulnerable, these patients are treated with contempt, their concerns dismissed, their pain ignored by rude and uninterested midwives and doctors. A damning report published last week on maternity services means that we can no longer dismiss bad care as rare.

The UK's first parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma found there is 'shockingly poor quality' in maternity services and that good care was 'the exception, rather than the rule' On the contrary, it appears to be endemic. The UK's first parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma found there is 'shockingly poor.