Can I request the labour record?

you should have been given a copy anyway. I know with both my births i was given a copy of the records the same day as the birth so yes I would definately ask if you want one. Your midwife should have given it to you so i would ask her.

I was given a copy too but while I was in hospital and had a mini meltdown about everything (at 10pm just as my MW texted me) she told me to ask to see my notes and to read through everything. I have a medical background so I could understand them and it made such a difference to how in control of everything I felt!

The other thing my MW and OB did was ask me a few days later if I was happy with how things went. I also had a traumatic time when he was born and only got to hold him while they cut the cord and then I didnt see him again for 9 hours!!! If I could get hold of the megab*tch MW at the hospital that kept telling me I had "lights on but noone home" I'd give her a piece of my mind.

I think it is INCREDIBLY important to get that debriefing.

You own your records so I dont think you shouldhave any problem getting a copy......and it makes for really interesting reading months on too.

i got two copies...and a yellow page of stuff..and all the notes are very very detailed in my pink book as well....

What you can do is go to the hospital you gave birth at and request a copy of the notes. In Palmy you have have to fill in a form and then they send them out to you about 2 weeks later.

I wasn't given mine but requested them late last year. I rung the hospital who posted me a form to fill in and it took another month or so for them to send it all out to me. But mine was really long as I was admitted Thursday midday and didn't give birth until Monday morning. But it was really interesting reading and both DH and I commented how at the time they seemed a bit useless and not doing much to help me but they actually were monitoring me really closely

Hope you don't mind me asking, but are these the computer print out things? My pink book is super detailed, but the print out is just one page with bits of info under all sorts of headings - is that all it should be? Birth was straight forward, no pain relief and had only been there for 3 1/2 hours before birth, so not much to say, but is that what you're asking about? Or is there something else I should be looking for?

I would also ask for a debrief with your midwife as well. I havent been given notes either time, but when I did my birth plan for Greer, we went over my labour with Hannah and it is amazing how differnet the real version of events was compared to my spaced out version. I think the sooner you can talk to her about it, the sooner you can move on from it. I put off having more babies for ages because I was so scared of doing it again, but if I had of just gone through it earlier I wouldnt have been so worried.

monster wrote: Hope you don't mind me asking, but are these the computer print out things? My pink book is super detailed, but the print out is just one page with bits of info under all sorts of headings - is that all it should be? Birth was straight forward, no pain relief and had only been there for 3 1/2 hours before birth, so not much to say, but is that what you're asking about? Or is there something else I should be looking for?

Thats sounds about the same as mine - i was at the hospital for about 2hrs. I was wondering what everyone else had written. Maybe ours was short because we weren't there for long?

I was given the paediatrician report from when Jack was 1 day old but that's it. What is the pink book? Is that like the Johnson's pregnancy book or something?

Might ring my m/w about it, but she'll probably ask questions which is annoying. She was great during the labour as there were so many things to monitor, but she was so busy I was talked about, not to, when everyone was coming in and out. I was thinking about it so much last night that I didn't go to bed until 2am (as you can probably tell from the time of my first post in this topic!) I think I really just need some closure. My labour was in no way as bad as some others but I really just feel like I was a spectator (from a long way away) and not actually part of the whole experience

Most of my notes were observations from the nurses - so however often I was looked at, they would go back and write down their findings. There were also notes from each time the Neonatal Pead came to see me while I was in labour (4 days) and also visit from other medical professionals. The few hours before I gave birth, in the delivery suite were entries about when I had a VE and how far dilated, when pain relief was given, when waters broke, all with times which was very interesting as I was quite spaced out and time flew so wasn't aware of a lot of it. The one page with various heading will be your discharge summary.