Choosing a hospital in London - HELP please for first time mum

[kiteflying]

I am a first time nervous mum at 39 - my precious bean is the result of a succesful IVF procedure and no way am I taking any risks with him or her. I have already had one miscarriage scare and am doubly anxious. So we looked at hospitals early - I am only nine weeks now, and were astonished at how grubby and plain awful the three hospitals we were given to choose from were. We live in Islington and were told we have to chose from the Whittington, UCH and Royal Free. UCH was where we had our fertility referral work done and I had an infection after an internal scan in their ante-natal clinic. Scary and definitely not somewhere I would hazard twice! Our GP referred us to St Thomas' because of my concerns about my age, precious IVF pregnancy, and early miscarriage scare, and our MASSIVE (though diplomatically expressed) concerns over safety and hygiene at the three hospitals we were offered. St Thomas' have now written back to refuse me unless I have a medical reason for being referred there. I don't understand - I thought at thirty-nine (I will be forty when the baby is due) I would be automatically classed as high risk and accepted there, especially as I am rather anxious to have access to an EPU after my earlier scare. Is there anything I can do? Does anyone have any words of comfort that might make me more accepting of the North London choices we have been given?

hi kiteflying, i had two wonderful births at the royal free and i think i'm a bit picky/demanding!!! both were in the midwife led bit but the midwives were working between there and the mat unit and were very lovely. ante natal classes/visits were crap but the actual labouring bit was everything i would have wanted. hth. x

Well all the births that I've attended there have been wonderful and I really like the midwives and consultants.

But........ okay I'll tone it down to.... great!

Well ok Mars, I'm glad some people have had great experiences there. To be fair, I did finally manage to get a decent homebirth service out of them with my last baby so I know there's at least one nice midwife there! And I'll grudgingly admit that Miss Henson is alright as obstetricians go....

Bloody glad I'll never have to go there again though

Congratulations on your pregnancy

I could have chosen one of 3 S London hospitals, and I asked my female, mother-of-3 GP which hospital was the hospital of choice for all the GPs she knew.

And I went to that one.

IME hospitals can look very disheartening and dispiriting, but that does not necessarily indicate the all important factor - the level of clinical care for you and your baby. Likewise levels of infection need looking at from the pov of individual wards and types of surgery. Infections you develop are as likely to come from the bacteria you yourself carry (i.e many, many of us carry MRSA on our skins all the time - and Strep B which was a probelm for me). I'm not trying to be cavalier about this, I promise. I have a child who needs major orthopaedic surgery - surgery for which infection is a severe risk, and the likelihood of infection will play a part in my decision as to which hospital. But our consultant has told me that children's wards, for e.g, are much less susceptible than certain other wards. All of which might have crisp packets lurking under the bed!

Good luck!

I mean which hospitals GPs chose to give girth in.

I've only read the OP. I had my 1st DC at The Whittington nearly 5 years ago. Yes it is a big grubby & yes having 4 male prison officers surrounding the prisoner in the next bed can be slightly off-putting but IMO the ante-natal care is really excellent and if you get Miss Henson as your consultant (presume you will have one) then you are extremely lucky. I've had my other 2 elsewhere (as we moved) & every consultant I've spoken to raves about her. I stayed in hospital for 3 days - managed to get a private room, ate practically nothing but have very happy memories of it all. For me, the medical care was what mattered and I certainly got it there.

Claire Melon is also rather lovely at the Whit! Met her at the last 2 births I attended. Very forward thinking.

Mars - I hope the Whittington really is changing, and if we're name-checking nice midwives/obs I have to mention Aileen Keigher, a fab cmw. But there are also some real baddies there, or have been in the past. (Including the only male midwife I ever had, which has rather biased me against male midwives.) And I hope they've improved their cleaning standards on the postnatal ward since I gave birth there 12 years ago!