Which hospital? Chelsea & Westminster or St Peter's? Recent reviews please!

[yourmagicmonkey]

Hello!

I'm 29 weeks pregnant and am registered with C&W antenatal unit, which we've been really impressed with so far and we feel comfortable with the hospital....

The problem is we're also trying to buy a house out of the area and if everything goes well, we could move before the baby is due in July - hopefully moving in by June.

We're weighing up changing hospitals to St Peter's, which will be a 15 minute drive from the new house, compared with a 40-45 minute drive to C&W.

C&W has a new midwife led birthing unit which I would really like to use and I feel comfortable in the hospital, plus I haven't heard great things about St Peters. I guess the question is - is distance to the hospital more important than facilities / familiarity with a hospital?!

Sorry, its a complicated situation but any advice on the pro's and con's of staying vs changing would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much!

Have you tried the local boards?

Do you mean St. Peter's in surrey or in Kent? The one in surrey is our local hospital and there is a midwife led unit opening there in a couple of weeks which I am hoping to give birth at in the autumn if everything stays low risk. It will be very new when you're due! Anyway just thought I would throw that into the mix. I know some older reviews of St. Peter's are not fab but the more recent ones seem much better. They do a lot of antenatal classes there too.

Thanks Moggle, that's really helpful- I hadn't heard about the new unit opening. I'll call and ask them about it :)

I gave birth to my DS at C&W at Christmas. I was very impressed by the antenatal care and also the care during labour (I was in the old midwife led unit, birthing pool with a doula provided by C&W and then transferred to labour ward for an assisted delivery). I have not a single complaint about my care up until I was transferred up to the ward post delivery. I was NOT impressed by the post natal care (they were VERY busy and just didn't have time to look after us well, which after an episiotomy and difficult birth without pain relief, and as first time parents, was a problem!), so we transferred to the Kensington Wing for our 2nd night - that was brilliant and well worth the money. We had much nicer surroundings (private room with a bed for my husband) and very attentive midwife care (teaching us to feed my son, checking on me, giving me pain relief etc.). As a first time parent this made a HUGE difference to us. If I were to have a second I would DEFINITELY go back to C&W on the NHS though would budget to transfer up to the Kensington Wing after delivery again! (c.£850 per night).