Independent midwives in South/South West London

[NGPY]

Hello

Anyone used one in this area and can give a recommendation?

Thanks in advance for your help

i dont know any personally but i have heard that mary cronk covers that area and is meant to be realluy good

Check out Surrey Independent midwives at www.surreyindependentmidwives.co.uk
Mary Cronk is part of this practice and also practices independently.
I personally used Andrea Dombrowe (also from SIM - her picture is on the site) and she was FANTASTIC.
They cover SW London.
COntact me via 'contact another talker' if you'd like to discuss in more detail!

Even though I ended up with a 2nd C-section (tried for a waterbirth VBAC!) it was still the best £2000 I've ever spent)
Good luck.

South London Independent Midwives are good and have been used by friends of mine. I had antenatal classes with one of the midwives and she was great.

Check out this independent midwives site to maybe find some more.

I used the "Birth Centre" midwives and they were brilliant - they will come to you at home or you can use their Birth Centre in the grounds of St George's hospital in Tooting, or they will accompany you to hospital.

I was planning to have ds at the Birth Centre but on the day for various reasons, wanted to be in a hospital and had him in Kings College Hospital. My midwives delivered ds and I didn't see anyone from Kings at all.

here is a link {http://birthcentre.com} I could not recommend them highly enough.

huff - first time i tried to link and failed! anyway its www.birthcentre.com

Thank you everyone, this is very useful.

Mo2, thanks for your kind offer - I may well contact you off board.

Lamin, this is really cheeky, would you mind if I dropped you a line as well? Please don't feel any obligation to say yes - it's a very private matter after all.

Thanks again

Hello Lamin if you are there, or anyone else please!

I have got it down to two contenders:

South London Independent Midwives and
The Birth Centre

The fees for the Birth Centre are approx £2,000 more than any other practice I've looked into.

As far as I can tell this is the incremental value proposition:

• Option of using The Birth Centre itself as well as home or hospital choice
• Reputation, experience and contacts of director
• More midwives therefore greater cover and ability to swap if you don't hit it off
• The celebrity clientele, "as seen in Vogue" factor

Have I got it right? Am I missing anything? Is it worth the extra £2k?

BTW - none of the Independent Midwives I've spoken to have Professional Indemnity insurance. For those who have used IM - did this worry you at all? Or did it change your decision to use IM?

Thanks in advance for comments

Hope no-one will mind if I bump this up...

Ind MW won't get insurance because it is more expensive than their annual income ! So they do not hide the fact that theya re not insured - it is up to you to decide if that is OK. You can still sue one anyway....
Are you by any chance not in the area covered by the Albany Practice?

Hello Pupuce

Thanks for your response.

Not sure I've heard of the Albany Practice? Is it one of the community teams out of Kings?

I'd go for the S London Independent Midwives given the choice, as yes there is a bit of a status symbol thing going on with the Birth Centre (not to detract from their very good work) and that does have an effect on the price. I know someone who used the Birth Centre and wasn't that impressed - they wouldn't go for them again but would use the other S London ones for preference. As for the insurance thing, having had two IMs who of course weren't covered, no, it doesn't worry me at all.

Yes I think so - they are no independent MW but they have an astonishing success rate. They are VERY different from everything else in the NHS. They have a 40% home birth rate !

Thanks, Skara, yes there is, status symbol thingy I mean...

Pupuce

I had vaguely heard of them before - but was under the mistaken impression that they were a standard community midwives team - had enough of that to last a lifetime last time, thank you v. much.

I found them on the net - they are self-employed and self-managed, but not quite independent in that they are funded entirely by the NHS (whatever trust Kings is in I assume). They accept referrals from local (they are based in Peckham) GPs and from Kings. They have fantastic outcomes - you're right nothing else like it on the NHS that I've ever heard of.

Unfortunately, my GP does not refer to them. However, I will contact them tomorrow and see which GPs do refer to them...

Places are very limited though, so I'm not sure it would be appropriate for me to try to muscle in on a place - the practice is specifically designed to help the disadvantaged local population...

As I can afford an IM maybe I should stick to that route...

It does beg the question why all midwifery can't be run like this. Sigh.

Hi Sue

Not sure exactly what you mean? That's not exactly how it works with the Albany lot... I have been referred to my community mws by my GP.

Pupuce

I have just spoken to the Albany practice and while they do in theory take women on direct application, in practice their limited places are filled by referrals from a particular Health Centre in Peckham. They have put me on a waiting list, but I will have to wait until I'm 24 weeks to know whether I've got a place with them.

So my options are:

1. Go with IM from start to finish
2. Go with IM until 24 wks if a place opens up at the Albany, then trf to them
3. Go with "bog-standard" NHS mws until 24 wks if a place opens up at the Albany, then trf to them

Thanks for your suggestion, an excellent one, I'm not quite in the area to make this work for me I think... Did consider trf to the relevant Peckham GP, but decided not practical even if lists open etc.

Thanks for these comments and please keep them coming

Sue, you are right I don't need a GP referral to an IM, if that's what you meant.

Hello

I have another four or five days in which to make a decision, so will probably bump this up a couple more times between now and then just in case it brings out any other comments.

Thanks in advance

Teresa, who now works with South London Independent MWs was one of a team of MWs attached to Kings when I had my DS. They were a specialist Homebirth team called Brierley, and take anyone who wants a homebirth (and also specialise in women with depression and mental health issues). I just rang Brierley, as I live in the Kings catchment area, and they took me on.

I though Teresa was fantastic. She wasn't the MW who was with me throughout the whole of established labour, but came out when I was getting started, ran all the classes I attended, and saw me in the post-natal period. She OOZED the kind of confidence that comes from real experience, was incredibly woman-centred, passionate about her work, genuinely caring, calm, and sensitive, Very personable, she could really communicate.

Whereabouts are you? Kings has other innovative teams, including Oakwood which is attached to a GP practice. I had the OW team first time round and they were fantastic. I do sympathise; with my second pregnancy I'd moved out of the Oakwood catchment area, I tried to get Albany to take me on and got nowhere, and ended up with the community team and a lot of unease, I have to say, about my regular m/wife. I was fortunate and the m/wives who did eventually deliver me - at home - were FANTASTIC (and I would opt for them if I ever had another baby which I'm not going to) but it was very worrying at the time.

Oh the irony! We are actually just inside the King's catchment area, but when we moved (about a mile from where we used to live) we didn't change GPs and current GP refers to St Thomas's and related community teams. Interestingly, I haven't heard good things about King's for hospital births, not that I want one of those, but you never know what will happen.

I will see if I can contact the Brierley team direct and see where I get to with them.

If that doesn't work out then I will go ahead with the IM route, probably South London Independent MWs.

Thanks to Blu and MI for these additional insights and information

PS - considered switching GPs to try and improve my chances of getting in with one of these teams, but decided that was not a practical basis on which to choose a GP.

Kings has swish new maternity suite, I know, if you end up there (a lot nicer than when I had dd1).

hi everyone, for anyone who missed it on other threads, NGPY was me.

just coming back to this thread with an update. afraid i didn't pursue the brierley angle in the end. although it's heartening to hear that more innnovative ways of delivering community mw services are emerging, i still felt i wanted the comfort of having someone "on my side". hope that makes sense.

so i have decided to go with south london independent mws, having decided that they would provide the service i want and that the incremental stuff provided by the birth centre did not justify the extra cost for us (although of course depending on one's requirements, that might not be the case for everyone).

thanks to everyone who was so helpful to me on this thread while i was going through the options

bk am I right in assuming you are pg now? If so, many many congratulations! Love Cam xxxxxx

BK- you're a cheeky monkey
Well done on the pregnancy - hope it goes smoothly this time !