wow!! sounds like you have had terrible care The saffm, i would defintaly complain with care like that , thats not on, i have only good things to say about my amazing midwife , i guess like any profesion there are good and bad workers .

as my midwife is also my bestfriend i also know what goes on behind the scenes , Midwives in this country are extremly overworked , there is a real shortage . my midwife has 2 children and sometimes works up to 70-80 hrs a week to keep up with demand . she had absolutly no breaks over christmas and new year and hasnt had more than a week off in over 2 years . she is constantly getting txts and calls from her clients and to be honest some of the stuff people ask is just time wasting and ridiculous , sure your midwife needs to be there for you if you have concerns and needs to see you regulary for check ups etc but they also have alot of clients and some people need to realise they are not there midwives only client and they cant be there for every single moment of there pregnancy. im certinly not pin-pointing anyone on this forrum when i say that , its just what i see with my friends clients .  There are some really bad midwives out there, i'll be the first to admit that, but i also think we need to praise the amazing work some of them do , i know my mate does not get enough credit !!!!!

Thanks for all your responses.  I'm putting something together but got to sound sensible rather than emotive which is what it is coming out as at the moment.  And I've also got to remember the details of the last 2 pregnancies (that went wrong) because basically ALL the maternity services I've recieved have been poor.

Firsttimemum88 - my midwife's initials were GS.  Is this who you had.? If so then it makes it even more important to me to flag the problems I've had with the services involved.

I can't imagine Plunket can be any worse than the midwife or Home Care have been.  Tthe midwife rang me yesterday to tell me she'd be here today so I haven't been referred on yet.  My issue is not just with the midwife though.  It's also with Home Care who told me they'd come and visit but then didn't then when I rang them they said they'd recieved the referral (from the NICU) but it wasn't in the right format so they hadn't accepted it and I should contact my midwife.  "I can't she's on leave" "well we're not meant to see you" "but you have a referral and no-one is seeing me because my midwife is on leave" "when is she back?" "I don't know, I can't contact her, she's on leave" etc etc.  Then when they finally visited and found Kiara underweight "oh we need to come every 2 days" YES YOU BLOODY WELL DO but they haven't "because the midwife is coming to see you".  Oh my god are they all idiots?

Their care leading up to the birth was pretty awful too.  I had only seen my midwife 4 times but had 5 different back-up's so it's not like we actually had a relationship.  Then there was the highlight of one of the back-up midwives telling me I wasn't in labour because I was only 34 weeks and "you don't seem concerned enough" despite contractions being 5 minutes apart and lasting >30 seconds.  I had Kiara 5 hours later.

Thanks Stef - I'll write some stuff down to get it sorted in my mind then send it off to both those places.

Does anyone know who you'd write/report to about problems with the whole damn service, rather than a specific midwife?  This is my 3rd pregnancy, but first baby, and for each pregnancy I've had problems with the midwives.  One was an independent, one was from Birthcare and this one was a Domino.  My problems are pretty much all around lack of follow up and no-one actually taking responsibility for my care.  If I wasn't chasing people up no-one would have visited me after this emergency c-section and no-one would have followed up my prem baby after she came home.  And now, even after they've visited they've failed to turn up again.  It's absolutely apalling.