A midwife is facing being stuck off after she acted like a bit of a nutcase to one of her patients. When I say nutcase, I mean giving the woman’s nipples a squeeze, telling her to imagine smoking a spliff (good advice I’d say) and refusing to give an epidural.
Samantha Stanton, who was treating the patient at Broomfield Hospital in Essex, has been accused of failing to provide proper pain relief to the mother, instead telling her to imagine she was “drinking a glass of rum and smoking a spliff.”
She also commented on the patient’s “large, lovely nipples” before giving them a bit of a feel, performed examinations in a painfully rough manner and took notes on a paper towel. The last person you’d want in charge of your vagina basically.
Samantha was recently called before a council hearing in Stratford where her behaviour was questioned. Conor Kennedy, for the nursery and midwifery council, said:
When the registrant [Stanton] met mother one she was in such pain she was crying. Stanton asked “are they tears of joy?”
The mother replied they were tears of agony.
Stanton said “what do you expect? You are in labour. You should be in pain.”
Things got so bad that the dad said the baby looked “grey” when it came out and he thought it was dead. Jeez, that sounds like an absolute ordeal. I mean, giving birth sounds traumatic enough — as if you need some heavy-handed woman refusing an epidural on top of that. Still, can’t be more dramatic than giving birth in a Subway toilet. I highly doubt a foot-long BMT is going to provide any kind of pain relief.
