04/09/2020
is a campaign that’s raising awareness of the inequality experienced by pregnant women and their partners during antenatal appointments, scan appointments and hospitals stays - including induction of labour, where partners are not allowed to be present during these times.
For many women antenatal appointments and scans throw up unexpected news, and more rarely, devastating news, and it is during those appointments that women need their partners most; they may be in shock and expected to retain large amounts of information; or make decisions about their care without their partner’s support or involvement.
On June 5th this year, the Government lifted the rules restricting partners from attending appointments and visiting you in hospital. Whilst some hospitals have lifted these restrictions and are allowing partners to these appointments and to visit, many are not. This campaign has given women and their partners a voice, to express how damaging this has been to their care, mental health and experience of pregnancy, birth and the early parenting period.
are asking many questions of this policy – ‘why are we asking women to undergo induction of labour alone?’ ‘why are women expected to attend scan appointments alone?’ Is this acceptable when we can sit in restaurants, bars and crowded public transport together but partners are unable to attend antenatal appointments’? The campaign is shining a spotlight on this postcode lottery and demanding that those hospitals, preventing women their choice of partner during antenatal appointments and hospital stays, fully explain and justify this position, accounting for why they are unable to offer this and what strategies were put in place to evaluate it.
What have been your experiences, during Covid-19, of your antenatal appointments and hospital stays?
And to midwives, doctors and other healthcare professionals – what are your concerns and frustrations – are your voices being heard?
