The report into the Nottingham maternity failings has been released (may be triggering)

Ive just been listening to the bbc live report of this. It is truly appalling. Trust leaders knew of serious issues for years, bullying and harassment was rife and cover ups including lack of reporting or recording incidents was common.

I gave birth in Nottingham many years ago and sadly its no surprise to me that maternity care there has been spotlighted as very poor. But this is absolutely deliberate negligence and its horrific.

I am similarly devastated. I was a patient in 2019. My son and I lived, but both with lifelong disabling conditions. The care we received was horrific. When I made a complaint to Pals, I was told that it wasn't upheld, because doctors and midwives wouldn't say such things as a baby was at risk. They could and they did.

We don't show up in the report because I thought for a long time that the pals records would automatically include us in the Ockendon report. I now believe I was wrong about that, and there may be more families like ours.

I think of the families who lost babies and mums every single day. I can't believe how hard they had to fight for such simple and basis justice in circumstances that beggar belief. Some of the cases are so unfathomably awful. It is incomprehensibly heartbreakingly bad -in the hospital I can see now from my kitchen window, and where so many good people work. We have said it so many times, but it can NEVER happen again.

The irony in our case is that my dad is a maternity doctor. He trained at the QMC and after my son's birth he made a dash across country to keep us alive, while we stayed on ward for weeks in critical condition.

I don't honestly know if that would have made a difference - whether we are alive because we got care that other families didn't, which is a horrible thought in itself, or whether the arrogance was such that they just didn't care.

On BBC breakfast, I cried this morning listening to the mother who lost a baby when the death could have been prevented. Born small and sent home too early with no intervention. Heartbreaking

I submitted evidence - my baby emerged unscathed, I still have lifelong injuries.

2012 that was, my community midwife was so angry when she heard how I'd been treated - she urged me to copy my maternity notes before they were archived... people fucking knew that long ago. One HCA on the post-natal-hell-pit would check the roster for me for when the real nightmares were on so I could make sure DH was there for those shifts because she was so foul to mothers.

To be fair - DD1 was the horrendous experience at QMC. DD2 was born at the City Hospital site and the staff there were amazing - which is when I realised just how fucked up the way I was treated with the first birth was.

I cried watching Panorama a few weeks ago as bad experience after bad experience came back - I carried the guilt of thinking I deserved how I was treated for so many years.

Nearly as much spent on Maternity Compensation as Maternity Care itself.

This statistic is the crucial one. It tells you a huge amount in terms of political priorities and how much women are valued and how much having children is taken seriously by politicians and NHS decision makers.

This is the one the point that's hugely central in any debate about government spending. It sums up poor choices.

"We're not that bothered about the women in here, we're only really interested in the babies" - QMC post-natal ward, 2012. I remember it word-for-fucking-word.

My DD had a stillborn daughter in this time period under consultant care at QMH. She found out things were not going well at the 20 week scan.Who knows if things could have been different, but the consultant treated her with care and thought throughout.

Her midwife care was elsewhere...and the hospital chaplain there was utterly wonderful.

Yes, same in respect of a subsequent child (well, twins) at City. It took me years before I could even pass the QMC without distress.

I don't know quite where to put my anger and bitterness today. I've felt for years that there is a reluctance to talk about my oldest son's birth in family and friends. A tiny bit of 'she couldn't cope' not 'this was insanely fucking appalling', which means that I feel I'm not allowed to talk about it any more. That horrible victim blaming logic is written through the Ockendon report like a stick of rock but by midwives. Midwives delivering desperately ill babies in active labour and laughing at mums' fears.

In our case my baby was failing and I begged for a C-section. The consultant told me it would be electives and I would be sent home for a minimum of 10 days and my baby would die, because of my stupidity.

When it was independently investigated the expert consultant doctor said this could not have happened, because it could never happen in the NHS. Although my husband was with me, and I have legal training and I wrote an account as soon as I could and sent it to Pals...

I don't know what else I could have done, but I find it hard to live with my sense of total failure. I tried to raise the alarm when I could and no-one listened or cared, even in the complaints team, in the C-suite and even in the independent reviewer. The culpability is so much wider than the maternity suites. And thats not even including that they still have a criminal investigation into who - twice - deleted inquiry records in the early stages.

I can't read it...i have ptsd from my eldests birth there in 2011 (my other babies are 2024 and 2025, it took me 13 years to have another baby and I had to have c sections both times)

Horrifying. So sorry.

I dont understand how, in a country like the UK, such abuse and neglect can be so deep and systemic.

I think I had a decent(ish) time second time around at City - largely because I was asked if I was OK with a student midwife leading things - which put everyone onto their better behaviour.

I was a piece of meat first time around - feel quite wobbly today about lots of stuff since the report came out - but some of it, I feel kind of relieved that it wasn't just me, and it wasn't something I "deserved" to be treated the way I was - lying in the dark listening to staff slagging off the patients (and me in particular), threatened with social services, left without food and everything else. It was something incredibly wrong culturally in that area of the hospital at that time, and I didn't screw up - I was unfortunate enough to go into labour at a bad time, in a bad place (and I bloody adore Nottingham so I hate thinking of the city like that), and in the worst circumstances. I'm lucky they only wrecked my hips and pelvis mishandling me and the kiddos came out OK.

I now have to work quite closely with NUH staff - and it's fine doing that on Teams or whatever - but I still struggle physically entering the QMC building - over a decade and nearly a half on. The curtains can trigger massive flashbacks (if you've seen "that" curtain design you'll know the ones I'm talking of)

They even refused to refer to babies as their names when we were in - they would ONLY call them Baby Smith (or whatever) even if you explicitly said you wanted them to refer to the baby by name.

When DD1 was born - they didn't even tell me if it was a boy or a girl before they took her away. Bless the midwife who delivered DD2 and made a point straight away of telling me because she'd felt like crying when I told her they hadn't even told me that last time around.

I've read the whole report - for me, I know it's going to be highly difficult to avoid it for the next few weeks so I figured I'd brace myself and do it sooner rather than later - and I'm glad I did because they need to be called out for the culture of women-hate they had allowed to develop.

I'm working up to read it all but I recognise some of the failings identified in the media reporting. My daughter (2018 birth) is healthy, but I think we were a "near miss".

I was encouraged to take a pause before final delivery when fully dilated - I opted not to as I was in so much pain. As soon as she started to emerge, panic ensued as they then realised she was in distress, with the cord wrapped twice round her neck. Despite me being linked to a monitoring machine they'd completely missed the problem before that. She needed resuscitation after birth. I've so often been grateful that I rejected their advice...

Yeah - I keep remembering more and more bits that I must have filed away...think some of us are going to get even less sleep than the rest of the UK tonight somehow.

It's only since I started working in the NHS and sharing bits of what happened - and seeing the horror on colleagues' faces I realise how absolutely bang out of order Nottingham was.

I havent read it yet. I gave birth at the City hospital in 2005 to my eldest - so before these issues - and Im so sad for all the women and children who have suffered since then because the care I had back then should have been the standard care they had too. What the hell happened to change it so much, in such a short space of time?

Thank you all for posting. Its horrific.

@JennyForeigner please don't feel you failed. You were horrendously let down by people you should have been able to trust to do the best for you and your son. They failed you. You have not failed him.

The culture in that hospital must be rotten from the top. Today it was revealed that the mortuaries there were also in a mess. I hope they sack plenty of people.

From friends who work within other areas within the hospital - it's still got a bit of a "tricky" culture in parts but it was terrible in the early 2010s.

I have to say, few years later one of the kiddos was hospitalised on the children's wards and the staff there were absolutely stonkingly amazing! The teams I also hook in with professionally there are amazing as well.

It is utterly appalling. I am so very sorry for all of you who experienced this. It's horrendous

@TorturedParentsDepartmentThere are pockets of good practice in most shitty organisations. Its going to take a long time to turn round a culture like that. Also, they need to genuinely value their staff (!) because it helps to ensure the staff value their patients.