Experience of changing midwives?

Hi ladies! I have been really struggling to get hold of my assigned midwife, she is almost always on annual or sick leave, has only attended one appointment so far and I’m currently waiting on a response from 3 emails to her, one of which was sent at the beginning of August
I was ok with this but my pregnancy has now been changed to higher risk since my 20 week scan as I’ve developed fibroids and there is no response from her on this at all again so far, she is absolutely lovely but I don’t feel confident that I can get any advice from her at all or rely on her to attend the appointments (I don’t mind waiting a week or 2 for a response but over 2 months is taking the biscuit)
Has anybody else had an experience like this and requested a midwife change? I haven’t put in a request yet and it’s a shame as I do really like her when she responds and the one time I met her, but I just feel it’s all a bit too unreliable. I don’t know if this is normal though?

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I know from personal experience as being a midwife myself that midwives now have big caseloads of around 90+ women. However, I would never not reply to an email from August as that is way too long! But you absolutely can request to change midwife and don’t feel guilty about that. You have to think of yourself and your baby and what suits you x

I have considering changing midwives too! So I’m also curious about this. My midwife only works Mondays or Wednesdays, so outside of those hours I would have to ring the pregnancy unit. In my last appointment, there was a student midwife with her who was the person who actually spoke to me and my midwife didn’t even remember seeing me the previous time, or look at notes to remember to check my Co2 levels again.

She’s lovely, but I genuinely don’t feel supported what so ever. It sucks!

In my first pregnancy I had such a flakey midwife, again she was lovely but always off sick so I only actually ever saw her once and had a different midwife every time who all measured my bump differently so had a lot of unnecessary stress and I live in a small(ish) village so have the same midwife this time around. Currently seen her once but before I saw her I messaged her on 4 separate occasions and no reply and when I turned up she didn’t even know I was pregnant with twins. I’ve said to my husband I’ll see how it goes because if I changed midwives I’ll have to go to a different surgery out of my way. If it’s not inconvenient for you to change midwives I would just do it, honestly caused me so much unneeded stress as a first time mum! X

I changed my first midwife after meeting her as she was not atall nice! & she got so much wrong in my notes which horrified me!! Since then I am on my fourth due to the others leaving. It's disheartening as I haven't had chance to build a relationship 😕 Do what's right for you!! Xx

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