In your experience, which is the best London hospital to give birth in?

[jenny132]

Hi all

I?m 10wks pregnant and am already panicking about the birth?!

I?m based in central London, so am pretty close to all the main hospitals ? St Thomas?s is probably the closest. I?d really appreciate some recommendations of where people have received good care during and after their birth.

I want to have an epidural so home birth centres are probably out? And I would like a private room to labour in! Other than that, I can?t think of any other needs?

Would really appreciate your own experiences and recommendations to help me choose.

Thank you!

maybe not much help but hi!

my sister has fought long and hard to give birth at St Thomas's, following a really not very nice at all experience at Lewisham Hospital. Although she is v happy with the hosp as far as she can see, she has to have her antenatal care miles from either the hospital or where she lives. So if you go for Tommys, find out where your antenatal care would be (I assume GP surgery but I think there's something funny about my sister's arrangement because she's not normally in the Tommy's catchment. Maybe I wasn't listening when she told me .

I think St Thomas's has a pretty good reputation. Are you talking about going private for your care, or just having a private room? I would have thought you'd have to go the whole hog (ie you won't get NHS midwives looking after you in a private room), but you can sometimes get a private room post natally in NHS hospitals. the Lindo Wing at St Mary's provides good private care with all the NHS stuff right next to you if you need it.

Hi - thanks for the replies. Not planning on going private - just the good old NHS! I always assumed that you laboured in a private room - but reading some posts on here, people said that had to labour in a normal ward?!

do people really have to labour on a ward? i assumed that was usually a mistake, i.e. nobody believed they were really in labour so they were on an antenatal ward for too long. Is that not right? i've never heard of a delivery room that wasn't a single (except on Friends actually!) but ready to be corrected?

I was on an antenatal ward (I had had some bleeding so had gone in as precaution) until I was 4cm dilated and then was moved to labour ward and had an epidural.

I was on the ante-natal ward at QC until I hit 4cm too. I thought it was a bit unfortunate that I was in a room with 3 other women who were in because all was not going well in their pregnancies. I felt the last thing they needed was me groaning away.

BTW- was only in because was due to be induced, but started labour spontaneously. If they hadn;t wanted me in, I would have stayed at home for longer and probably missed that bit. The delivery unit was all single rooms.

IME, unless the delivery ward is quiet, you don't get to go to a private room in the delivery suite until you're in established labour so it's quite likely that if you go in early you'll be in a shared room.

I'm afraid i can't recommend UCH (until/unless they move to the new wing). The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson's delivery rooms had no en suite facilities and the post-natal wards were crammed full of beds.

I visited St Thomas' while looking for a hospital for #2 and it looked like heaven compared to UCH.

Not looked round St Thomas yet but it's where I'm planning to have no2
It has a home from home unit (for low risk) and then a hosp birth unit (high risk/all the drugs etc)

I suspect you will find all NHS care in London stretched with not enough midwives on duty
If you are lucky you'll labour on a day when it's not too busy

I would reccomend St thomas's. I worked there so although way out of the area was able to have DS there on the advice of my GP. Is this your first birth? Only reason I ask is because in the experience myself and my friends have had there, the home from home (where you can't have an epidural) is the much better option. You are admitted to a room where you stay untill you are ready to be discharged (as long as that is within 24 hrs from time of birth, a bit quick for some people) Also be prepared that people in uniforms will probably be trying to talk you out of having one for the next 30 odd weeks!

Hi, I gave birth in St Thomas' - very recommended, although I was private for postnatal the delivery suite was NHS. They've several birthing pools, so I got into one of those for the first couple of hours - then had a epidural when things went a bit pear-shaped. Exceptionally clean, all private and fab views!

Brummie's decsription of UCH sounds a bit like QC was for me (no en-suite to delivery room), no privacy on the post-natal ward etc, but my friend who went to UCH had a great birth.
They allocated her a student midwife who looked after her throughout her pregnancy, talked her through her birth plan, came to her house when she went into labour and escorted her into hospital once she started looking serious. She was 9cm when she arrived and delivered 90 minutes later. The anta-natal care and the delivery sounded perfect to me, and then they gave her her own room so she could sleep for one night and discharged her early the next day. If you can get on a system like that where you get some degree of one-to-one care, that would be ideal, and probably best no matter what hospital you go to.

Thanks for the advice everyone - sounds like St Thomas' is the one to go for. Thanks for all your help