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Childbirth

Share experiences and get support around labour, birth and recovery.

St Mary's Paddington or UCH?

2 replies

HPSource · 26/03/2011 11:47

Help please! I found out last week that I am pregnant with my first child :)
I was not expecting my doctor to ask me which hospital I would like to use and feel slightly overwhelmed! I'm based in N-W London and so St Mary's Paddington or UCH seem the most obvious choices (with St Mary's being closer). Has anyone had any experiences with either of these that they are happy to share to help me make my decision? Thanks :)

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
tiggersreturn · 27/03/2011 20:43

I had ds at st mary's and was very happy with ante-natal and labour ward but maternity/post-natal was pretty dismal. I have type 1 diabetes and am high risk so tried out uch for the next one as they promised slightly different things for handling my condition. The pg ended in a mc and I found the system appalling and having finally got pg again am back at st mary's. The problems I experienced were a complete failure to communicate in their system and the effort you had to put into getting past the bottom completely inadequate levels. Examples included - failure to give me an appointment around 6 weeks even though I was in their system and this is what they're meant to do for type 1 diabetics. Sending me an invitation for a GTT the week after having a miscarriage (it's a bit like asking someone with a prosthetic to have their leg x-rayed in case they've broken it). Refusing to let me have an ERPC under local because "I would be too woozy to control my blood sugar" but in the end having it under general with no drip so i was "controlling" it that way. Finally calling me up for 3 months in a row following ERPC to find out why I wasn't attending my ante-natal appointments.

I like st mary's because I'm under them for other things and any problems I call up my consultant and get it sorted without any hassle.

If you're low risk, think about the type of birth you want to have and which will cater more for it. Think about distance to work and home and forms of shared care.

Sadly nowhere in London is wonderful post-natally but both uch and st mary's have good facilities if anything goes wrong.

HPSource · 28/03/2011 18:42

Thanks for sharing your experience tiggersreturn. Good luck over at St Mary's.

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