‘At crucial points they ignored us’: a same-sex couple’s experience of maternity care
When Lucy Allen-Goss’s partner gave birth, the couple were met with incomprehension and sometimes hostility from maternity professionals
Over time, it’s the really little things that hit you.
Before my daughter was born, we did all the things we thought you were meant to do. The hospital asked us to write a birth plan, so we did. It was very short, and we felt a bit embarrassed that we’d felt the need to stress we were a same-sex couple. Surely we were being silly? No one would be thrown by that, in 2017!
But, of course, they were. By the time my daughter was born – by emergency c-section – my partner had gone through three days of missing out on care, because she had a female partner. We persistently found that medics just weren’t expecting two women to be mothers. So, at crucial points, they ignored us. I found I was repeatedly shut out of the ward where my partner was in labour. I couldn’t bring her food, or a change of clothes. Midwives glancing at the person pressing the buzzer to come in assumed I was a visitor, trying my luck out of hours. When my partner was trying to talk between contractions, in active labour, the surgeon about to do her c-section was more interested in questioning who I was and why I was there. He wouldn’t listen to me trying to explain she wanted a c-section. Later, someone gave me scrubs to wear in theatre, and I found out afterwards that the theatre staff assumed I was another midwife or a doula. I heard the same surgeon explain, cosily, to everyone: “This woman is very keen for a natural birth … it won’t work, but we’ll try forceps first.” I can still picture how white and frightened my partner was.
After her birth, Elisabeth developed sepsis. She and my partner had a horrible time on a very crowded postnatal ward. I remember a woman bringing food round for mothers insisting I couldn’t collect a meal for my partner as ‘he’ should be getting his own. Staff repeatedly counted me as a visitor rather than a partner; at one point, when I asked about getting my parking validated (I’d heard one of the dads sorting out his), the staff weren’t sure I qualified, and asked, “How long have you been with her?”
Some of these things may sound minor, but they were frightening. Every labouring mother deserves a birth partner who can be allowed on the ward to support them, who can advocate for them, who can bring them the things they need over a long period in hospital. No labouring mother ought to be repeatedly questioned about who her birth partner is, when she is already in pain and trying to concentrate on labour. When you have a very sick newborn, you should be able to focus on that newborn, rather than having to argue to get a slice of toast. Some doctors and midwives were wonderful, but others, sadly, were really not.
Last year, my brother and his wife had their first baby. They proudly sent round pictures, including a lovely photo of my brother doing skin-to-skin contact with his new daughter. That’s a thing I never did. It’s such a small thing, but seeing that photo took me right back to that delivery ward where that surgeon thought my partner had no one there to care about her. Afterwards, one of the midwives realised their mistake and giggled. “We had no idea who you were!”
