Hampshire hospitals

[blushingmare]

We are moving to East Hampshire before the birth of DC2 and I know nothing at all about the maternity services and reputations of hospitals. Sadly I can't go to a midwife-led unit - must be at a hospital. Does anyone have any experience of hospitals in the area and any recommendations or ones to avoid? I think the options I've been looking at are Queen Alexandra in Portsmouth and Royal Hampshire in Winchester.

QA is fantastic, cannot praise it highly enough. Maternity unit is only about 4 years old. I've had two of my children there in 2011 and 2012. The consultants there are world class imo. A few friends have chosen to have their children at Royal Hants so their dc had Winchester on birth cert (?!) and found the care and facilities a bit lacking. It is a very old hospital.

Southampton General is also meant to be very good. Hopefully you wouldn't need it but the nicu there is one of the best in the country.

I gave birth to my two DC at Princess Anne maternity unit in Southampton and it was fantastic. My pregnancies were consultant led and I needed specialist treatment which is why I ended up there but I couldn't fault the care I was given.

Not sure about QA but I had one DC at Royal Hants in Winchester and the others at the Princess Anne in Southampton.

Both were good but the Princess Anne was better in my experience in terms of care. They also have an amazing neonatal unit there.

Sorry for confusion - Princess Anne is at Southampton General

hmmm don't think qa has a great rep locally.
both mine born at winch (yy for the birth certs ;) which was fine the mat unit is not old at all. unfort dd had severe problems which winch couldn't diagnose but we were sent to sgh.i stayed in pa soton which was q nice.winch v v naice hosp with lovely food.lovely lady there in scbu.

good luck whatever you choose.

This won't be of any help to you, OP, in making your decision, but I just want to reiterate that the building at Royal Hampshire that contains the maternity unit (Florence Portal House) has just celebrated its 40th anniversary, so it's really not that old.

Whenever there's a media story about RHCH, the original, and very old (1868) building is shown; and even the hospital's official website shows that, which is misleading as those buildings haven't been used for patient care for a long time. The more modern buildings are low-rise and spread out, rather than being compact and high-rise. If you want to get an idea of what Florence Portal House looks like, use google maps, search on Queen's Road, Winchester, and switch it to streetview.

What I like about what RHCH has done, is that it's moved all the women's health aspects to that separate building (maternity, scbu, gynae, breast surgery/screening) so it seems to be very women-focussed.