I have just been reading your birth stories and decided to tell you my rant about my 3rd baby. my waters started trickling at 4pm so i went into hospital. they induced me as I had previously had an infection so i needed antibiotics. by then it was 11pm and nothing much was happening - tho I was in quite a lot of pain and contractions were every 5 minutes. they said nothing may happen until morning, so they needed the room and could my partner please go home! i was gutted as i really wanted his support and i burst into tears.
they told me i would have to go on a ward, and i pleaded for him to stay but they said other women on the ward (gyny ward, not women in labour) would be annoyed their partner's couldn't stay too. Surely no woman would begrudge someone's partner staying when they are in labour? they gave me a sleeping pill and told me to go to bed, but the contractions were horrendously painful and I spent a ful 2 hours walking round the dayroom, all alone, before they decided I was in 'proper' labour and rang my partner to come back at 1.30am. i think this put me through unnecessary distress and is pretty crap.