Local Swedish newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning reported that a mother who gave birth by C-section last week, has been told to clean her own hospital room.

Overworked nurses asked mother of two, Elin Andersson, to strip her sheets and tidy up before she was discharged from the hospital in northern Sweden. The incident happened because the hospital was short staffed.

Andersson said that the nurses asked for her husband to help care for her and they regularly forgot to give her medication.

The last straw, said Andersson, was when they gave her a big white laundry bag and asked her to clean out the room and the bed where she had laid.

Midwives at the Sundsvall Hospital confirmed that Andersson's claims were true.

"She describes precisely those bits that we don't have time for," said Midwife Gunnel Westerlund said. "Medical safety always comes first and you can't leave [another] mother while she's giving birth."