Woman's Hour - Should more be being done to welcome fathers onto maternity wards?

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

Last month, midwives at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary complained that expectant dads were treating maternity wards ‘like a hotel’. Issues ranged from dads sharing beds with new mums, ordering takeaway food and making other new mothers embarrassed about breastfeeding. But as NHS policy states that maternity services should be ‘mother-focussed and family-centred’, should more be being done to welcome fathers onto wards? The UK government is chartering a final flight to bring British nationals back from the Chinese city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak. In China alone, there are now more than 24,300 cases of the virus, with the death toll at nearly 500. Dr Clare Wenham Assistant Professor in Global Health at the LSE tells us why she believes that the response to health emergencies should not be gender neutral. We asked you to share your experiences of being part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Today a listener tells us about fighting for the right to sterilisation when her husband withheld his consent. Plus the impact joining the movement had on her life. Plus we hear from Syrian paediatrician Dr Amani Ballour, now the focus of an Oscar–nominated documentary called ‘The Cave’. Presenter Jenni murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Dr Clare Wenham Guest; Dr Amani Ballour Guest; Dr Jeremy Davies

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 6th of February. In today's programme, the midwives in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary who complained that new fathers treat the ward like an hotel. The NHS says the maternity services should be family-centred, so how can the fathers fit in? A documentary called The Cave has been nominated for an Oscar. It features the Syrian paediatrician who ran a subterranean hospital through the bombs and threats of chemical attacks. She joins us this morning. And last week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Women's Liberation Conference in this country. Myra, who's now 78, heard the programme

and emailed to tell us what Women's Lib did for her. Now I'm sure you've heard in the news that the coronavirus shows no signs of coming under control. A baby was born with the virus on the 2nd of February. The child's mother had tested positive before she gave birth. Only a handful of children are said to have become ill with the virus, but a total of just over 28,000 people have contracted it and 563 have died so far. They were all in China. Two people have been diagnosed in this country and the last flight will be chartered by the British government on Sunday to bring the last Britons home from Wuhan and put them into quarantine for two weeks. The response to the current outbreak seems to assume that men and women are affected in the same way and consequently

should be treated equally. Dr Claire Wenham is Assistant Professor in Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics and suggests a gender-neutral response to a health emergency is mistaken. Claire, what exactly do you mean by a gender-neutral health emergency policy? Well, so the World Health Organization and governments around the world have created policy to respond to outbreaks of infectious disease like coronavirus based on the tenets of prevent, detect, respond, all rooted in epidemiological practice and very well evidence based. But what they fail to take into account with this focus on this type of response is the

direct and indirect impacts that outbreaks have on women. So if we think about, for example, the informal care role that women provide in societies, this is going to put women at greater risk of being infected with disease if women are the ones who are caring for the elderly, caring for children who are the at-risk groups of infectious diseases, mostly. They then are going to face an additional burden if those children are then ill because they will have to take time off work to look after them or financially have to pay out-of-pocket payments

to go and see healthcare providers in different parts of the world. And then there's other indirect effects that happen on women in outbreaks. So, for example, the heavy handed policies that we're seeing currently in Hong Kong and China of shutting schools. Well, what happens when schools shut? Women have to take time off work. And that has a financial impact to look after their children. We saw this in West Africa, markets shut as part of the mechanisms to stop Ebola spreading. And women are disproportionately market traders in this part of West Africa. So this had an economic impact on them.

There's also the question of distortion of health systems. So if everyone is panicking about Ebola, panicking about coronavirus, and all health activity is being focused on that, that means that other areas of health get neglected because there just simply isn't capacity or money to cope with everything. Importantly, for example, we saw more women die in the West Africa Ebola outbreak of obstetric complications because maternity units were shut to provide Ebola care. And so there's a series of indirect and direct impacts which really need to be recognised to recognise the differential

effects of outbreaks on women to men. So what's your specific observation about the current crisis in China? Well, so the current crisis in China is interesting because currently we don't have a complete set of sex disaggregated data to know whether men and women are affected equally. Now, this is commonplace. We often in outbreaks don't get this data of actually knowing are men and women affected equally? So this is why policy becomes gender neutral. At the moment, the indications are showing that more men are dying, but that doesn't necessarily mean that more men are getting

infected. There might be other issues at play. For example, we know there's a heavy burden of smoking amongst elderly male populations in China. That might mean they're more likely to suffer from lung infections and pneumonia, which is this coronavirus is being caused. And so it's really we need to get this data and we need to make sure that the Chinese government and the WHO ask for this data in real time and not later in the response as we've seen in other outbreaks. How does health policy differ from policies on other big global issues like, say, climate change or humanitarian aid? Well, that's really interesting because the UN Framework for Climate Change and the IPCC have a distinct gender working group and a distinct gender policy stream to ensure that the disproportionate effects of climate change on women are recognised and policy can be gender mainstream to ensure that we are doing what we can to minimise the effect of climate change.

Similarly, in humanitarian emergencies, we see a lot of effort from non-governmental organisations and the UN system to recognise the disproportional effects of all emergencies, all complex emergencies or natural disasters on women. But how quickly was that recognised? I mean, I seem to remember discussing humanitarian aid and the kind of problems that women might face in refugee camps years and years and years ago. And then eventually somebody said, oh, yes, we have to recognise that. It's awfully slow. I completely agree. It's awfully slow. But

outbreaks haven't just happened. We've seen outbreaks happening for millennia. We've seen continual scares, you know, Spanish influenza, the 67 Asian flu, all the way back to the Black Plague. This isn't new. Women have had this disproportional effect. It's just that it hasn't been actually recognised, I would argue in part, because of the lack of sex disaggregated data during crisis moments. So what was learned from SARS, Zika, Ebola? Did you get the data that you needed for those?

So my research, which is on Zika and the impact of Zika on women, looked directly at how policies directly affected women. And the problem with the policies to respond to Zika wasn't just that women were disproportionately infected with the Zika virus, but they were then responsibleised to do something about it. Women were asked to not get pregnant, for example, and that was placed onto women not to do, despite the fact it takes two to tango. We also saw that the message from governments in Latin America was to keep your house free from standing water or anywhere where mosquitoes can breed. But asking someone to clean their house effectively is a heavily gendered task. And so not only are women more at risk, but the burden and the responsabilisation of the state within health emergencies falls disproportionately onto women as well.

So what real difference would having women at the table implementing policy make? I think it's about asking women about their everyday lives. What effect would this policy have on your life, right? Rather than just looking at the big picture, understand the realities of everyday life, where women are interacting, what other care responsibilities they have, what financial implications policy might have. And recognising that there is a difference is important, but then trying to gender mainstream policy so that women's lives are not disproportionately affected. Dr. Claire Willam, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. Thank you.

Now, you may have heard on Thursday last week our discussion about the first UK Women's Liberation Conference, which was held at Ruskin College in Oxford 50 years ago. I asked you to let us know if you have memories of the conference or if it had had a profound influence on your life. Well, Myra, who's now 78, sent an email explaining how she recalled the conference. She had found herself in a difficult marriage, was trying to arrange a sterilisation after the birth of her two sons,

but found she had to have her husband's consent for the operation. It led her to fight for her rights to her own fertility and join the Women's Liberation Movement. My marriage was very definitely on the operation. It led her to fight for her rights to her own fertility and join the women's liberation movement. My marriage was very definitely on the rocks and I knew that things were desperately wrong. The only way I knew I could handle things, I had no plans, was to make sure that I didn't have any more children. I didn't get on with the current conception at that point and the only thing to do was to go for a sterilisation, which I was very happy about. And it was at that point in 1969 or 1970 when I was asked to take this consent form to my husband for him

to sign and was told that I had no rights over my own fertility and that he was the only person that could give those away as it were. How did your husband respond to that? He was absolutely livid that I should have considered doing it in the first place and he refused. And what was your response to it? Well, I think it was the first time I came up against such a huge block. I, from somewhere or other, got the strength to be so angry and I threatened to divorce him if he didn't sign it and in those days I would have been able to divorce him if he didn't sign it. And in those days, I would have been able to divorce him on the grounds of mental and physical cruelty, really. And he realized at that point that I meant it.

And he sort of relented and signed this consent form but said that he was I mean he was completely unhappy about the idea that I was no longer going to be stuck at a kitchen sink washing nappies and having his children he only felt comfortable in himself if he knew where I was. Why did this make you decide to attend consciousness raising groups? well, why I was so angry. I just didn't have the language. I didn't have the vocabulary. I didn't know, in a way, what I was entitled to. I just knew it wasn't fair. It was wrong. You described joining the group as a lifesaver. Yes.

In what way was it a lifesaver? Because I knew that if we made it possible that this was a safe arena in which one could start to talk about despair and start to form the language by listening to what other women were saying and finding the phrases and finding the confidence to say, you know, I'm a human being too. You filed for divorce the following year and then had to go back to court for a custody case for the boys. And I know there was reaction to the fact that you were a member of Women's Liberation. How was that used in court?

There was a case in which my husband petitioned for complete custody and control of the children. He wanted to take them away from me. And he cited my membership of the Women's Liberation group as being one of the reasons why I was an unfit mother. How did you respond to that? Well, if it wasn't so serious, it was funny, you know, and ridiculous, and gave me an insight as to the level of thinking of men,

of that man, you know. What happened in that custody case? Well, most of it actually happens in the paperwork round the back. And I have often wondered whether that judge just, you know, rolled his eyes and looked at this case and thought, oh, for heaven's sake. He forced my husband in court to agree with him that I was a fit person and a fit mother and to withdraw his case. And what was his response?

He wept. It was a horrible experience. The whole thing was ridiculous and it was a horrible experience. The whole thing was ridiculous, and it was a horrible experience. But I was on trial for me as a person, and I still can't forgive an establishment that let that happen, if you see what I mean. You did have two boys to raise because they were living with you. Yes. How did the movement help you with that? The movement had various strands really. One of the

ones that I was interested in was well as mothers what do we do about our sons? How do we not bring up men that we wouldn't want to know? We didn't want the boys to grow up feeling ashamed to be men. We wanted to liberate them as well, really, and enable them to grow freely and with choice as we would have wished for ourselves. Those were the sort of discussions discussions and they were incredibly helpful. You're now in your late 70s. Yeah. Your sons must be quite grown up. Yes. How did they grow up? Right. I'm so glad you asked me that Jenny because I was thinking about it last night. My oldest son has found the courage and energy to become a woman and he's still married and he is joyous in his life and I am so proud of him and so, well, her, and so delighted

and I did wonder whether that might have been possible had he had a different mother. And the other son? The other son is married with two children and, again, I swell with pride when I think about it. And he and his wife started out with two little children doing the traditional thing, you know, her staying at home and him going to work,

and it didn't work for them. And very courageously they went for counselling to work out, you know out what to do about this. And they decided to switch roles. And my daughter-in-law, who has great earning power, went off and even had to stay away from home for two or three days in every week, earning the money and my my son was a full-time house husband and father and it's been absolutely wonderful to watch i am so proud and i am actually quite envious of those children because they're getting such brilliant parenting. I was talking to Myra. And last weekend, 900 women gathered at University College in London

for the Women's Liberation 2020 conference. Tomorrow we'll be hearing from some of the women who attended and discuss why some of those involved in organising it felt it was necessary. Still to come in today's programme, the midwives in Edinburgh complaining about the new fathers treating the maternity ward like a motel, how family-centred and welcoming of fathers is the NHS, and the serial, the fourth episode of 24 Kildare Road. And you may have heard the series of interviews we broadcast

during the last few weeks about difficult relationships and how often we tend to repeat the same damaging patterns. Woman's Hour has put together some advice on fostering strong and healthy relationships in an article on the website. And if you'd like to catch up with the personal stories from Nina, Joe, Katie and Sadie, you can find them all along with every episode of Woman's Hour, of course, on BBC Sounds. Now, a documentary film called The Cave has been nominated for an Oscar. The ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on Sunday. The Cave of the Title is a subterranean hospital in eastern Ghouta in Syria, which was run by a paediatrician, Dr Amani Balur, during the five-year siege which began in 2012.

The United Nations described it as the longest siege in history, when 400,000 people were cut off from the outside world. Dr Balur is passionately opposed to President Assad and the Russians, who, of course, have always denied targeting civilians or committing war crimes. Dr. Ballour is now based in Turkey, but Jane spoke to her from New York on her way to Los Angeles. She asked her if it felt strange to be going to the Oscars after all she'd been through. Actually, I didn't expect that someday I'll be here, but I'm very happy to be here now. It's very important to me. And the film to be nominated for the Oscar, it's also so important because Syrian people were suffering for about nine years. And till now, nothing happened.

No one helped them and they're still suffering now. So I want to be their voice. I'm trying to do anything I can do to help them, to talk about them, that may make pressure on politicians, to ask everyone I see everywhere to support Syria. This is my goal and that's why I'm here. Can you describe to us what it was like outside? Why was the situation so bad that people had to live underground? Assad regime and his allies used all types of weapons against civilians.

They targeted schools, they targeted primary schools, they targeted hospitals, civilians, shops, everywhere. It's no life on the surface. Of course, this is a very simple idea. We want people who want to survive. We as a medical staff and the other civilians, that's why we try to find places underground to stay in. It's always dark, no electricity. We were dreaming to see sunlight. We dream of the fresh air. It's a very difficult life

underground. How many people were living underground? At the beginning of the siege, there was about 400,000 people. And none of them lived underground. Some of them didn't find a place to stay underground or insist to stay at their homes. And that's why we have a lot of injured people. We strongly wanted to see sunlight, to be out. And we tried to get out sometimes. But it's dangerous.

But you know, that was for long years. And yeah, sometimes you see people on the surface of ground and they try to walk to go somewhere. They have some small shops. They try to make a life, but actually there was no life. You did have the opportunity to get out, didn't you? And you stayed. Yeah, I had at the beginning, I had a birth chant before the siege. But nevertheless, you made the decision that you would stay and work as a doctor in these extraordinary circumstances. Yes. And the doctors started to help them in the hospitals. It's a crime to Bashar al-Assad and his regime. It's a crime to be a doctor and to help the people. From the beginning, we have a few hospitals in Al Ghouta and they destroyed it, they bombed it. And that's why we opened a basement underground and started working. All the hospitals in Al Ghouta were underground.

And how many people would you treat on an average day if there ever was such a thing? We were just five paediatricians in the whole Al Ghouta and there were about 100,000 child under 12. And of course, they are sick, they are hungry, there's no food, no medicine. Sometimes I had to see every day about 60 or 70 child just in my clinic and this very high pressure on me. Also, I should see injured people. There was everyday bombing. So a lot of injured people every day in the emergency room. And of course,

we were just a few doctors and we should all of us work in the emergency room. The film does show that music would be played in the operating theatre. Tell me a bit more about that. Dr. Salim, my colleague, he is a surgeon and he tries sometimes to put this music for the patients because sometimes we don't have all the drugs for anidia and sometimes the patients feel comfortable and calm down after hearing the music and he likes the music because we were afraid because of the warblings sounds all the time. And he wants us to calm down, to feel a little comfortable because we need to focus on our work to help the others. That's why he always said, I want you to hear the music, not to hear the sounds of warblings or bombing. And what about chemical warfare?

Because there is a terrible scene towards the end of the film about the impact of chemical warfare, particularly on young children. What does it do to young children? Just explain. Yeah, that's very frustrating to us because you see the scene in the film, it was chlorine attack and it was much easier than Sarin. It was in 2013. They killed just in one night 1,400 people. We weren't filmed at that time. And you didn't see that. There were thousands of victims.

And we were just a few doctors and some volunteers. We tried to help as we could. But that was very early. We didn't have the big hospital. It was just some rooms. And we had very few medical supplies, a little medicine. We didn't have oxygen at that time. And there were a lot of people are suffocating, too many children. And just we saw around us the dead bodies. It was horrible. It

was shocking for us. We didn't see something like that before. And the most difficult thing I faced that we choose who we want help because all of the victims were suffocating. It's urgent cases in medicine, and we should help them immediately. If we started to help someone, the other will die, of course, because there is no time. And we did that. We choose. And this is very difficult. There were a lot of children, and I started to help the child. Another child died because we couldn't help. And in the film, it was a chlorine attack that was filmed. Yes, it was chlorine.

Are the effects of that different to sarin then? Yeah, it's easier because there's no dead. It's just like the allergy symptoms, difficulties to breathe. And as you see, the red eyes and the nose drain. But of course, it's dangerous for children. Fortunately, that time, there were no dead cases, but it wasn't easy. It's chemical weapons. The film also shows that some men don't like women in authority. What would you say about that? Yes, this is the men in our community, they have this culture or customs from long time. They have an image about women that women should stay at home, women can't do anything like men.

They always say to me, you should stay at home and get married and have children. And that makes us very angry because why? We always ask why? We start working with the men in the hospital. We work at the same circumstances. There were no difference between men and women. But always they say to me, you can be a pediatrician in your clinic or doctor for women, but not a manager of the hospital. And I ask why I can't be a manager. I'm a doctor and the other managers were doctors. And I can do as they did and maybe better. And my colleagues vote to me. They choose me because they know me that I can. And when they come to the hospital and ask who is the manager, they need something from the hospital. When I say I'm the manager, they look at me and some of them refuse to talk with me. Sometimes they say we want men to talk with. Or is there any man here to talk with him?

I know that you are now not living there. You managed to get out. Do you still think about your time in that hospital every day? You must do. Yeah, of course. I'll never forget what I saw. I'm out of Syria now. It wasn't my choice to leave.

I didn't want to leave, but they forced us. And I hope that I can come back one day to Syria. And what makes me more frustrated and more angry is that it's still happening now. And no one cares about us. The international community does nothing for us. It's still happening. Too many people are in the camps now. They are suffering.

A lot of people, they didn't find even a tent to stay in. They don't have anything, nothing for heating. It's winter. They are in the cold. No food, no health care, and no hope. Do you think a lot of other Syrians feel the same as you, that the rest of the world has just forgotten the country? Yes, all the Syrians believe that.

They let us down. Half of Syrian people are refugees now inside of Syria and out of Syria. And, you know, they just sometimes say in Syrian AIDS, we don't want the humanitarian AIDS. We need to get rid of him and we can come back to our country, rebuild our country. So, course we are very hopeless and very angry from the international community and great countries which always talk about the human rights. What has happened to the underground hospital? After we left, they tried to make it still working, but there's no medical staff, no doctors. So I heard from some people there that it's closed now.

And what do you know about the people who are left? Is there anybody left in those suburbs that were controlled by the opposition, weren't they? Yeah, at the last campaign, they made a very huge campaign against Al-Ulta and we forced to leave. Some people decided to stay and the others decided to leave. Who decided to stay, that's because we were going to Idlib and Idlib is being bombed. The same situation, the same scenario. That's why. But some people who decided to stay, Assad regime arrested some of them and he takes some young men to his army to fight with him. There's two doctors decided to stay and he arrested both of them when we heard that he's killed in the prison and the other still in the prison now. If this film does win an Oscar,

do you think it will mean more attention on Syria and that something might change? Yeah, this is what I hope from the Oscar. A lot of people around the world know about the Oscar and they will know about the Syrian situation. They will know the truth because of this film. This is very important to us. And I hope that it can make pressure on politicians to help us to change the situation in Syria. And do you ever regret your decision to become a paediatrician?

No, of course not. But I can't become a paediatrician? No, of course not. But I can't become a paediatrician anymore because I have a lot of memories. I love my children, who I was with them for six years. But no, I wanted to help the children. I was happy to help them. It was very happy moments when I helped any child, when a child feel happy after talking with him or her, after supporting him. That's very good feelings. But now I can't work with sick children anymore. You just can't face it? Yes, I tried to work in Northern Syria, but I couldn't. They remind me of the other children. I like my children. I know them very well. And I saw their dead bodies.

I saw some of them lost their hands, lost their legs. And that's very, very hard to see. And they always ask why we are here, why we are under bombing, why we are hungry, why there is no food. It is very hard to work with children and to answer their questions. I always couldn't answer their questions. And how are you? Do you sleep well, for instance? Yes, now after about two years of living, I'm okay. I'm trying to be their voice, to support them, to bring hope to others who are still alive now in northern Syria,

people in the camps, the children in the camps, two million children without education, without schools. So I feel they need all of us to support them. Because I'm here, I can talk instead of them. I want really to be their voice. That makes me strong and still fighting to help them. Dr Amani Balua on her way to the Oscars and The Cave will be shown on National Geographic on Tuesday the 11th of February and that's at nine o'clock in the evening. Now if you're watching Called a Midwife on Sunday evening you'll have seen how doubtful some midwives

were about having fathers around during and immediately after the birth. It was set in the mid-60s. Well now it's almost expected that a father will be present and involved in the care of his new baby. But last month midwives at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh complained about their constant presence on the ward. They claimed the fathers were treating the hospital as an hotel, sharing beds with their partners, ordering takeaway foods and making other new mothers embarrassed about breastfeeding. Well the NHS says maternity services should be mother-focused and family-friendly so what should be done to welcome fathers onto the wards? I'm joined by Cathy Nolan, who had her son in Edinburgh, Leah Hazard, who's an NHS midwife in Glasgow,

and Dr Jeremy Davies, who's head of communications at the Fatherhood Institute. Jeremy, what's it like being a father on a maternity ward? Good morning. Well, I think it very much depends which maternity ward you're on. So some fathers seem to have a warm welcome and the staff seem to understand that they're important not just in their own right but because they're a useful support person for their partner but we also we did a survey two years ago with the Nuffield Foundation and we found that a lot of fathers were reporting that they were being ignored and sometimes actually they felt quite marginalized

by the experience so it was quite common for example for them to not be addressed by name certainly not to be encouraged to ask questions and two-thirds of the fathers who did our survey and it was about 2,000 dads who answered it about two-thirds of them at no point were any of the staff talking to them about their role as a father. What do you make of the complaint from Edinburgh that they tend to make themselves a little bit too much at home. Well to be honest I think this what what this sounds like to me is that a policy has probably been implemented without being clearly communicated either to the staff or to the dads themselves. The tone of some of the comments I've seen from the from the midwife who who was quoted uh seemed very much to be talking about the men as if they were an unwanted

encumbrance um and you know that's i i think from as apart from from a human point of view i think also from a clinical point of view that's think also from a clinical point of view, that's not a great attitude because, you know, these men are important to the partners. So even if you're only thinking about it clinically, I would say you should be thinking about these men, you know, as a potential emotional and practical support to the women so yes there may be rules that you want to surround their presence with and if those rules are communicated clearly to the men I'm quite sure they would follow them the vast majority Leia as awife, what's it like for staff when fathers make themselves, as is alleged in Edinburgh, a little bit too much at home? Are they an unwanted encumbrance? Well, I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to say that fathers are unwelcome on the postnatal ward.

As your previous guest was saying, it's really important to respect and honour the role that fathers can play, any partner can play in the early life of a family. So there's no excuse really for a sort of poor or unwelcoming or hostile attitude. But I think what we need to point out is that just logistically speaking, most large NHS hospitals are not set up to accommodate partners long term or overnight. We're usually talking about something like a four bedded bay divided by curtains. And in each bed space, there's just enough room for a bed, a cot, a chair and maybe one person at the bedside. So simply from a logistical point of view, it's quite difficult. And what I should point out as

well is, although we certainly want to welcome dads and partners at any time, postnatal women can be very very vulnerable physically and emotionally. Many of these women are exhausted, they may have limited mobility, they may be bleeding, they may be trying to breastfeed, they may be in sort of various states of undress throughout the day and night. So although you as an individual woman may welcome your partner, you probably won't welcome somebody else's partner walking past your bed space. And I think that's where the trouble lies. Cathy, I know you gave birth in Edinburgh last May.

What was your experience of this? We had a really positive experience. By the time we had given birth and gone up to the ward it was about one in the morning and um uh we didn't know if tom was going to be allowed to stay or not we asked if he could and he was advised to go home to get a good night's sleep um but that if he wanted to stay they couldn't stop him. And so we decided he'd stay. And I think we arrived at a very quiet time. And the midwife very kindly went and found

one of the few reclining chairs that they had on the ward. So Tom was in the end able to get a pretty decent night's sleep. How helpful was it for you to have him around? So helpful. And I wouldn't have wanted him to go home um he was able to help me have a shower and get dressed get back into bed he was able to change our son um and these are all things that a midwife could have done but it was it felt important that it was my husband that was able to help me do those things. What would you say it was like for the other women around you? You know, we've heard from Leah that women can be very vulnerable at this time

and there are a lot of women on the ward. Yeah, so vulnerable. And all the other women had their partners with them. One of the others stayed, I think, overnight. And it felt very peaceful on the ward. Everyone felt like they were in exactly the same boat. Everyone was considerate of each other's space and noise levels. And no one, yeah, everyone felt, we just all felt like we were in the same boat and it didn't feel awkward at all.

But I think we got lucky, possibly. What sort of trouble did Tom get into? Like he'd helped me have a shower and we'd left our son out at the midwife station and he went out to get him and didn't have any socks on so he was in bare feet and got a slight telling off for for being barefooted and promptly put a pair of socks on but that was that was about as bad as it got for us. Leo why would a man's bare feet be unacceptable on a maternity ward? That's a really good question. I couldn't possibly try to speak for the midwife who was there at that time. I mean, we can make all kinds of sort of vague comments

about health and safety. And I think, you know, obviously that was the midwife's concern at that time. But really, I think this is just a distraction from the bigger issue, which is the health and safety of the other women on the ward. So I think it's really fantastic that your other guest had a positive that Cathy had a positive experience sorry Cathy

but what we do need to remember is that you know that this is a ward for women to prioritize their safety their privacy and the the women and partners who are on a maternity ward are really just a sort of cross section of general society. So, yes, although the vast majority of couples will be lovely like Kathy and her partner, there will also be some who maybe are not so lovely. You know, in our hospital, we have mostly lovely people, but also some who are involved with the criminal justice system, some who are involved with human trafficking, some who you probably wouldn't want on the ward with you at night. So my job as a midwife is to make sure that everybody is safe and respected. Jeremy, how do you deal with that question? I mean, obviously fathers have an important role to play in their children's early lives. But might they be a little more considerate that birth and early care is really

about mothers and babies and they should know when to back off well i think to be honest that the the evidence we get is that the fathers are uh perfectly happy to back off so that so the tone of the responses we got in our survey was very much you know i understand that i am not the big deal here it's all about her and the other women on the ward that's the other point that's been coming over strongly yeah yeah i mean i think you know i go back to the point i understand that there there are logistical issues sometimes where you can't suddenly convert every maternity ward into a place where, you know, everybody has a private room and so on. So, but I think what we're talking about here is, you know, being reasonable, having rules clearly communicating the rules and if people break the rules then fine you know you deal with that but i don't think we should be designing a system around

the fact that you know whatever percent tiny tiny percentage of fathers are involved in human trafficking i don't think that should be how we design uh a modern nhs uh you know that that as as the the nhs's own guidelines have said for many many years ought to be uh mother-centered but uh you know thinking about the family family friendly i know it's quite some time since you went through this experience. What was your experience of it? How were you treated? I had a very good experience, actually. And in fact, it's the only, in the whole time, my son is 20 years old.

And I'm not exaggerating when I say that in the whole of his life, the only time a sort of publicly funded person really, I would say, engaged with me one-to-one as a human being was in the maternity unit. And it was a midwife who took me to one side and showed me very patiently how to hold him and bathe him and that fight it was only five minutes of her time but I really think it's it changed my life because it's it set me off as a hands-on dad. Well Dr Jeremy Davis, Lair Hazard and Cathy Nolan thank you all very much for being with us. I should just mention that Professor Alex McMahon the Nurse Director at NHS Lothian said in common with all boards NHS Lothian is implementing the guidance contained

in the five-year action plan for maternity and neonatal care issued by NHS Scotland called Best Start. It says that fathers, partners and other family members should be actively encouraged and supported. And we would like to hear from you. If you've been through the experience of being a new father on a maternity ward, let us know what it was like. Rachel on Twitter said, I really wish my husband had been allowed to stay with me.

I was in a lot of pain and the midwives and nurses were very helpful, but they were stretched with the amount of mothers and babies to look after. Having my husband there would have helped me and helped the hospital too. Vanessa said in an email, for me, having my husband able to stay with me and our new baby on the ward was key to my own mental health. Fathers are not dying to sleep in chairs being woken up every half hour by other patients and rounds. They stay to support their partner and care for their baby. I struggled to go to the toilet or get food when I was on my own with the baby in hospital. My husband kept everything feeling manageable and comfortable and safe and we did love being able to all be together. And Jackie said, goodness me, men taking

over childbirth services now, what about the privacy of other mothers? What about women from cultures where they're covered and have little contact with non-family? What about overstretched nurses? Me, me, me again from men. I was in a general ward some years ago following surgery and a young woman patient was accompanied by a much older man who stayed with her all day, lying with her on the bed and generally restricting her movement. She was bruised and withdrawn.

I complained to the staff about his presence outside visiting hours and was told the staff didn't want to deal with him fearing his aggression. Obviously a history there. I was horrified that staff and patients, never mind a vulnerable young woman, were forced to endure his presence. If I hadn't have been post-operative, I would have made a fuss. And then on what the women's lib movement did for me, Jenny in an email said, I was horrified to find I needed my husband's consent for sterilisation. That was in 1983. Luckily, we'd agreed together and there was no problem about it. The night before the operation, when I discovered this, he was to be out of the country. It was by pure luck he popped into the hospital on his way to the airport and could sign the form.

No mobile phones in those days to make contact. And Mary, in an email, said, Listening to your programme just now reminded me that I needed to take a letter of consent from my husband to the Family Planning Centre in Exeter in 1973 to have a lippies loop fitted, now called a coil. Well, thank you for all your contributions. Tomorrow, you can hear Frankie Bridge from The Saturdays,

who's joining Jane to talk about her new book on mental health, Open, and why asking for help can save your life. That's tomorrow with Jane from MeForToday. Bye-bye. If you're listening to some other podcast, then stop now and listen to a good one because the Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series

and we're doing loads of things, aren't we, Robin? We're going to be dealing with the science of laughter, conspiracy theories, coral reefs, quantum worlds, and finally UFOs. I love UFOs. It's also, by the way, the UFO one available to watch on iPlayer. In fact, all of the series that we've done are available on BBC Sounds. I must say that I wouldn't bother with the first series.

I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first two. Yeah. But we were played by different people then, I think, weren't we? Yeah, yeah. Melvin Bragg was you. You were Debbie McGee. Debbie McGee.

Bragg and McGee. Now that is a 1980s TV detective series that I will be making. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.