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Comment by flarg | Hacker News Reader

From personal experience in the UK, you're kicked out of hospital after a few days during which you received amateur advice from nursing assistants and a final discharge check for the baby if the doctor is available (if not then you have to go back for the discharge check). Back home there are irregular visits from a nurse who usually writes random statements in the a red log book but aside from that you're on your own. If you have time for the internet you might learn about why a baby doesn't latch and then maybe find a private lactation nurse who may or may not give you useful advice. Maybe one of them has heard of tongue tie because the NHS doesn't believe in it (and they're not allowed to support anything but breast feeding...)

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I would like to add my own anecdata that conflicts with this. We've had four children and our experience of ante-natal and post-natal care has been nothing like this for any of them.

The home visits are regular and scheduled, breatfeeding advice was offered in hospital, a breastfeeding support clinic is run for free in our local hospital once a week and on other days in local community centres. Two of our children have been identifed as tongue-tied by midwives in hospital. The midwives in hospital provided formula for the most recent baby when my wife was having trouble feeding.

Overall, we've felt very supported by the NHS. I suspect the difference is partly timing, every team contains good staff and bad staff. It probably differs region to region as well, I'm in Buckinghamshire.

Ours is a teaching hospitals trust, and a fairly large one I suppose, and we have had good experiences each time with our three children. I think there can be a big difference if you end up in a medical-led ward instead of a midwife-led one for the actual birth, but I expect there's lots of variance beyond that.

Not to disagree with your experience, but to clarify. Postnatal checks by the doctor may be performed up to 72 hours after birth [1]. The reason that the doctor might not be available, is because they may be attending a neonatal arrest call, which can require prolonged ventilatory assistance for the newborn by the doctor. In that setting, hospitals might want to make empty beds to enable more mothers to safely give birth in the hospital of their choice. In an ideal world, there would be more beds.

Finally, sorry to hear about your experience of tongue tie. This is also mentioned in link [1], so it's definitely not something that the 'NHS doesn't believe in'.

[1] https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg37/chapter/1-Recommendati...

Sorry for your experience. We've actually had a decent interactions with breast-feeding support workers (and local groups). Our first had a tongue-tie which we had cut on the NHS, though it was very difficult to get them to give us any firm advice on it either way. It's sad if different trusts have such varied support.

I do agree that the health visitors probably end up being more hassle and causing more stress than they're worth. By the time of our third kid we just smiled, nodded and lied our way through every interaction until they went away.

> It's sad if different trusts have such varied support.

Different trusts in the NHS have wildly differing support, policies, physio, mobile apps, leaflets and documentation, etc etc. It makes the "N" in NHS a bit odd, and surely is tremendously inefficient!

(Having said that, and having recently had a baby the NHS and their staff have all been amazing!)

I had tongue tie until I was about 7 years old when my sister noticed something wasn't right. I was never breast fed so it didn't get picked up.

Fortunately for us, when having our first, we knew about it and in Southampton UK they are one of the better hospitals who check for it and can get it sorted at one of their breast feeding clinics.

FWIW our experience was different. We left the hospital after 3 days, during which we received advice from professional midwives, including how to breast feed (and what to do if baby doesn't latch). At home visits from health worker and midwife were regular and data and notes in the red book did not at all seem random.

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