Anyone used the Midwifery Practice - South London / Croydon / Surrey?

[Sabin]

I'm 12 weeks pregnant in my first pregnancy and have been looking into the various options available for antenatal care and childbirth in the Croydon area.

I have visited the birth centre in Tooting (very nice but quite expensive) and the birth centre at Mayday Hospital - also very nice BUT even if you are booked there, I was told you are not guaranteed to have your baby there as they can only accommodate max of 2 women at a time - if they are full they send you back to the Labour ward

So I came to the conclusion to book an IM. South London Indep Midwives are highly recommended on this site but are already booked up for when I am due in August. I came across a really nice lady called Melanie from the Midwifery Practice which I discovered online
www.midwiferypractice.com/

Has anyone used them/had experience with them? I could not find anything on this site and would be nice to get some positive reviews from people beforehand.

yes! They were the midwives for the birth of my dd2 who is now 9 weeks old. They were great and I had a fantastic home birth despite having had an emergency section with dd1. You dont have to have a home birth with them though - they will accompany you to the hospital and provide support. It was all a really good experience. Only negatives - 1) Marsha couldnt get the gas and air to work so I had no pain relief 2) there seemed to be a bit of a cock up with regards to notifying the relevant of authorities of the birth - they sent the forms to the wrong council and I kept getting calls from the drs saying the info was needed and hadn't
been sorted.

But they were lovely and I would highly recommend using them.

Good luck and feel free to ask if you have any other questions

Kits

congratulations on new baby! lovely to hear that your home birth experience went very well - although not having gas and air must have been difficult, no?

im still trying to decide what to do for the best as i like the idea of home birth but my parents think it is very risky and better to be in hospital. However, all my local hospitals seem to be constantly rated worst at maternity services - another survey out today and it says the same thing!

what was it that made you choose to go with IM for dd2?