Irish parents respond to The Rotunda: It feels like we are shouting into the abyss

Since the screening of the first episode of The Rotunda there has been a tsunami of outpouring from parents and parents-to-be

Picture: Rollingnews.ie

It was the gift shop that sent people over the edge. The fact that the gift shop was selling fewer teddies than before the pandemic.

“It was as if the only difference that had happened in the hospital was that gift shops wasn’t making as much money."  Susan Rutledge is a registered nurse and mum to Alex (2) and Abigail (4 months), both born in The Rotunda hospital in Dublin. She says that The Rotunda, which aired its first episode of series three on RTÉ One on Wednesday night, grossly underrepresented the experience of attending the hospital during a pandemic.

Picture: Rollingnews.ie

The wrong story

“There is a story there to be told, the problem is that this programme isn't telling it,” says Rutledge. 

Rutledge says that the programme-makers failed to capture what it has been like to avail of the maternity system since March of 2020. What it has been like to be alone throughout a pregnancy and just after labour, and what it was like to be as she puts it “treated like a source of contagion".

I grieved in a side street

Colin O’Brien couldn’t watch the show. Two weeks ago, his partner Noelle miscarried on her own in the waiting room of The Rotunda while he sat in a parked car around the corner from the hospital. When Noelle was released, she fell into his arms and in order to shield her and protect their privacy in this time of untold grief, he brought them to the first place he could think of – an alleyway beside the hospital.

“I can’t begin to explain to you how hopeless and helpless I felt in that moment,” he says. “I have so much anger that I couldn’t be in the room with her, that we had to grieve out there on the street. It felt like we were in a third-world country like nobody cared about us.” 

When he saw the ad for The Rotunda, Colin couldn’t make sense of a system that allowed a television crew in to film a documentary, and yet didn’t let him bear witness to the loss of his child. It is the system that has failed him and Noelle, he says.

Carol Mulligan outside the Rotunda maternity hospital

What about emotional support?

Rachael Fagan Bermingham says “watching The Rotunda was an absolute kick in the gut. I was only able to stomach ten minutes before turning it off as it was too upsetting.” 

Bermingham gave birth to her second daughter Mairead at the beginning of August at UMHL. Her husband was not allowed to attend an appointment or scan during that time. She attended the emergency unit twice during her pregnancy, on weeks seven and twenty-two and her husband was not allowed to accompany her due to hospital restrictions.

“The stress and anxiety leading up to the birth were horrible. I went into early labour at 36 weeks and when we arrived at the hospital in the early hours of the morning, scared and worried my husband was told to go back to the car park. He was allowed attend her birth but had to leave one hour later.” During the days that followed, baby Mairead needed care in the NICU and Rachael’s husband was allowed to visit baby and mother for one hour a day. Watching The Rotunda left her confused.

“They keep talking about infection prevention and control measures but why aren't these being used to facilitate husbands, fathers, birth partners? They can find solutions to allow filming but not for essential emotional and mental support for birthing people. I am beyond fuming and utterly disgusted with the maternity system.”

Shouting into the abyss

Emily Madigan feels that the depiction of the maternity system during Covid times was grossly misrepresented in the show.

She has experienced extreme trauma in pregnancy. She has a three-year-old daughter, after whom she experienced six pregnancy losses and an ectopic pregnancy. In June of 2020, she gave birth to a daughter Mila by caesarean section, after an extremely anxious pregnancy.

“My husband joined just in time to see our little girl born but as she had difficulties after birth he never got to hold her and was sent home 30 minutes after her birth.” Her husband didn’t get to hold Mila until she was five days old.

Emily is pregnant again and due to have a section on September 30. She is infuriated by the depiction of pregnancy and birth on The Rotunda, having experienced first-hand the effects that Covid restrictions have had on parents and babies. “When our baby is born, my husband will be allowed into the hospital for two hours a day at a time selected by the hospital. Yet, the camera crew were allowed into The Rotunda. It really makes a mockery of what women have gone through and continue to go through. It feels like we're shouting into to abyss.” 

Like all birthing mothers, Emily needs her partner at this time and she says that she has been completely failed by the maternity system in this regard. “My husband is not a visitor, he is my support. Only he understands exactly what we're been through and the trauma that accompanies that. Only he knows how to provide the essential support needed to get through those anxious hours of waiting.” 

Shanna Woods and her son, Fabian at the Rotunda Hospital. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Vulnerability versus gratitude

Susan Rutledge says that the vulnerability of attending a maternity hospital in the middle of a global pandemic is hard to describe, but that the documentary did little to illustrate it. 

“In the hospital, the overriding feeling was fear. You have to understand, to be pregnant during Covid was terrifying. I got the first dose of the vaccination at 36 weeks. Up until that moment, I felt so vulnerable, hearing about stillbirths and mothers on ventilators in ICUs.” 

The great unspoken truth of pregnancy in this time, she suggests, is that our support systems have been completely removed and that there is no room for any emotion except gratitude.

“The narrative is that we're supposed to be grateful to have healthy children. So, I was supposed to walk out of the hospital, wearing my facemask holding my healthy baby and be grateful.” Rutledge says that this could not be farther from the truth of her experience, that she is traumatised by her experience. “ The thing is, I'm a registered nurse, I was not a first-time mother — I had everything going for me and I still struggled as a patient in the maternity system.”  

Today in a statement to RTÉ's Liveline, RTÉ said that its approach to the series has always been to “authentically tell the stories of mothers and their partners with care and compassion, and to celebrate the work of hospital staff in sometimes very difficult circumstances while at the same time bringing stories of love and compassion to the airwaves”.

“This holds true now more than ever. We believe in our public service remit and our objective in making this series is to offer an important insight into Irish life in 2021,” it said.

On social media, The Rotunda hospital responded to the discussion, saying "during this difficult time, we respect the sensitivities involved but believe that it is important to hear these stories and understand how maternity services operated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Filming took place with minimal numbers of crew on site and strict infection prevention and control protocols were adhered to at all times."