design your own delivery suite

[Lill]

Can any of you think of what would could be included in the design of a maternity unit that would make you feel more at home or help with a specific requirement you may have? e.g a kitchen area - for you, your partner or family members, fridges to store your own food thereby not needing to wait until the next designated meal time for something better suited to plastering walls. Prayer rooms, ground floor birthing rooms with access to gardens and an ensuite private bathroom, hotel type accomodation for your partner/family members should your stay in hospital be extended.etc etc
Any ideas may help with the design of a new birth centre.

Sorry, my capacity to type has failed me. I think i will remove my contact lenses before typing anymore! Please revert for clarrification if this is not making any sense.

While it's not quite ideal and I am waiting to have a trip around one. Here in Sweden, once you have given birth, you can go off to the 'patient hotel' where you get your own en suite, shared kitchen and bed for your partner.

The most overwhelming desire I had last time was to cuddle up with my husband while also staying awake to stare at the beautiful thing that had arrived.

Music!

great ideas keep them coming.
kia assume you would like a stereo per room so you could choose your own?

Lill, the delivery suite I used had a brilliant ensuite bathroom - shower with all round grab rail. Every room had a cd player too but both dh & I would have killed for a kettle to make our own drinks! Oh and a big,squishy bean bag for me would have been good too.

Aromatherapy candles - Lavender and Vanilla are my favourites.

Lill, there's a message thread about what we'd like to see in maternity units. Can't remember its name but if you can't find it, I sure someone here will remember it.

I'd like to see a very well stocked mother-and-new baby-orientated chemist in the hospital grounds - and a means of ordering supplies - delivered to you at your bedside, if necessary. So if you forget your hospital bag or find it lacking in something, you can re-stock easily. A tube of Kamillosan (soothing camomile cream) would have made all the difference to me in the first days of breast feeding. The hospital could not provide it, and my dh simply could not find it in any shop.

Also, lots of easy internet access. Good for a spot of virtual shopping if you feel up to it,(pampering or practical) and also excellent for support and advice, via sites such as this.

A good choice of lighting in each room, so you can keep things dim and relaxing, to gently introduce your baby to the world. And if you need to read, a small, bright, easy-to-angle spotlight that doesn't intrude.

Lill, is this the one that the team at Tooting are working on? Can't remember the name, but is it the London Birth Centre?
Fridge, microwave; good, organic food available round the clock for visitors and patients; cotton bedlinen and pillows without rubber underslips; kettles and CD players in the rooms; aromatherapy diffuser (not sure I'd want candles); shop selling reusable as well as disposable nappies, organic formula, quality mags and papers; en-suite bathrooms; easy access to your own birth pool; high ratio of midwives to mothers. Your own PHONE. A gopher who could nip out to the shops for all the mums once a day.
Being able to stay private in the same room throughout, not being trundled through the corridors; having the facilities clean and regularly maintained; being able to open the windows and adjust the lighting.
Above all, really good support for breastfeeding, which I found lacking in my hospital.
Oh, and a safe and pleasant garden including facilities for children to play - in fact, why not nursery nurses on duty whenever visitors are allowed, to give the little brothers and sisters something extra to do.
I love the sound of MalmoMum's hotel. Perhaps we could stay there a full month and get that Chinese experience of not having to do a thing except get to know your new baby.

Sound proof walls! I was fortunate to have a very large & pleasant room to myself (because I had a CS) but the 'din' from the non-stop TV in the room next door was unbearable. I love peace & quiet so I didn't want my own TV or music, just silence!

I was going to mention the soundproofing but not for TV din! The woman in the room next to me gave the most tremendous performance any of us had ever heard and it would have been rather nice to have missed it really!! 16 years ago yesterday to be exact!!

One of my neighbours had a cs in the States and said it was like going to a spa but with different treatments.

After-birth facial anyone? (And I don't mean something containing placenta).

a comfy bed with a firm mattress with head and arm rests help relax(!?) in between those pesky contractions. Oh and plenty of cold, cold drinking water.

Anyone got any more ideas.

Definitely somewhere for your partner/other child to stay. The last time you want them (dp/dh) going off and leaving you. A rocking chair. A phone. A toaster. Quiet. Books! Not that you'd get a lot of time to read, but I consider books succour...