"Unacceptably difficult to reach maternity assessment"

I was open to the home birth team (who were excellent) but ended up transferring to hospital. My feedback relates to care in the labour and postnatal wards (which was very positive), and my experience trying to reach maternity assessment (negative). 

The staff in the labour ward were wonderful and caring, and really made up for a previous traumatic birth experience. The student midwife was especially attentive and I'm pleased that my baby was her 40th delivery, which I'm told is a milestone in qualifying as a midwife. Similarly, the postnatal ward staff were great, except I felt improvements could be made to confidentiality. I don't mind that the discharge talk was given to everyone in the dorm-style room as a group, but the person delivering the talk should not have pointed to particular women and commented about if they had planned c section, or emergency section, and that if so the part about wound care was for them. There was no need to broadcast who had which procedure; it would have been better to just say this part is on wound care, for those who have had c sections.

The real issue is with maternity assessment. I was in active labour and my husband was on hold for 40 mins, despite being first in the queue for most of that time, just to ask them to send the home birth midwives to my house. By then it was rush hour and so the wait between my call and the midwives arriving was lengthy, horrifically painful, and contributed to my giving up shortly after their arrival (as I'd been in pain for long enough) and asking for transfer to hospital. 

Women in labour need a separate line to contact maternity assessment. These calls should not go in the same queue as people who are arranging to come in for monitoring/reassurance at a time that suits them (obviously that's important too, but it's not nearly as urgent). People open to the home birth team, who need to allow for the midwives to travel from all over the city, also need a more direct route to call the midwives out.