South East London Maternity Hospitals

[Rachel37]

Hi, This is my first post on Mumsnet, I have just found out I'm 4 weeks pregnant, I'm currently waiting for my consultation appointment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Charlton, South East London. Should I be asking to be referred to another hospital or does Queen Elizabeth have a good reputation? I don't know as I'm Birmingham and lived in London a few years. Any advice would be gratefully appreciated. :-) Thanks Rachel

Hi Rachel,

I had the start of my care for DC1 at QE hospital, actually lived about a 10 minute walk from there in the new flats at Master Gunners' Place. The scan was fine, although I don't hear great things about it for actually giving birth. I certainly had no intention of going there, despite it's closeness.

We ended up moving up north before I was close to giving birth anyway, but my choice if we had ended up staying was the Barkentine Birth Center on Isle of Dogs. I'm also hearing fantastic things about the Midwife Led Unit at Lewisham.

Come and join us in the antenatal clubs topic for January 2013!

I'm a HypnoBirthing Practitioner in South London so I have heard lots of tales of the various hospitals. I think it is fair to say that each local maternity unit appears to have a poor reputation and many of the parents I work with will drive past their local hospital to go to another one that they have not heard bad stories about. However. I sincerely believe that this is because some people love to tell a negative birth story and there is a statistic that people will tell 8x as many people of a poor experience as they will a good experience and mums with a good experience don't want to sound smug.

What I'm saying in a long-winded way is that you will have an equally good experience at any S.E. London hospital and anecdotally, the mums I've worked with who have been to QE have had very positive, caring experiences.

Good luck - have a great pregnancy and a great birth!

I'm afraid I had a bad experience there. Midwife kept ignoring my DH asking her to come and see me as I seemed to be in a lot of pain, then told me I was "too early in labour", then eventually offered me pethidine (which I later found out was a bad idea for me and the baby as it interacts with a drug I take for a chronic health problem).

When the midwife did eventually get round to paying any attention to me, she discovered I was 10cm dilated. I'd done the first stage of a back to back labour in four hours with no pain relief. I then had a stalled second stage because I'd basically gone into shock (again, I was offered no pain relief contrary to NICE guidelines). I only got my hands on any gas and air when being stitched up after the birth

DS and I spent a week in hospital recovering. I developed PTSD and needed to see a counsellor.

Sadly, judging by the reports of other women in my NCT group, this wasn't an isolated incident. The unit was just so busy they didn't have enough midwives to care for all the labouring mums. Therefore, the staff weren't able to support women in the first stage of established labour properly. Soon after DS's birth, they were told off by whichever body it is that oversees maternity care for failing to keep to the minimum legally required midwife:women in labour ratio.

I hear better things about Lewisham, if that's an option

Morning everyone, thank you so much for your responses, gratefully appreciated. Since yesterday my husband and I have done a bit of research since reading your responses and have now decided to change to Lewisham Hospital, NHS results/survey looks a lot better at this hospital.

Thank you

Thank you BuntyCollocks for the invite I will be joining the antenatal clubs topic for January 2013. :-)