choosing a london hospital

[cdreaming]

Hello,

We're considering which hospital to give birth in. I'm 7 weeks pregnant and this is my first one.

We are thinking about Whipps Cross, the Royal London or Homerton. We live a few minutes from Whipps so it seems to be the natural choice, but could anyone let me know about their experiences with these maternity wards?

thanks!

Hi there,

I had my daughter at Whipp's Cross a few years ago, and I had a fairly mixed experience. It was a very busy weekend apparently, but I was turned away from the midwife-led unit that I had originally opted for, and ended up in the medical labour ward, which was a bit grotty.

I had a long labour (12 hours) and I have to say the midwife who attended me during the labour and up to delivery was fantastic - she was present as much as she could be, really encouraging and supportive. I also felt that I was generally listened to, in terms of my preferences about the delivery etc. But I guess it is the luck of the draw with which midwife you get.

Post-natally, my experience was pretty awful though. My midwife went off shift right after my baby was born (she'd actually stayed on longer than she should have to deliver her), but after she went I was left for around three hours before I received any aftercare at all. No help getting to the showers, or with anything much at all at this stage, except did get a bit of advice about breast-feeding from a different midwife, who was fairly abrupt and patronising tbh. Same on post-natal ward: very busy and left to your own devices basically. But this could have been a one-off, as I say, it was very busy that weekend. I wouldn't go there again though, I don't think.

Might be worth going to have a look at the labour wards,they all do tours I think.I think most London hospitals are a bit disappointing on the post natal wards as they just don't have enough midwives.

I had a really bad experience at Whipps, and subsequently had a meeting with the director of midwifery there to go through a lot of the issues I had.

Other people on my NCT course however had very different experiances. I think when I went in, they were v v v busy, and I was ignored most of the time, and left to it without proper pain relief.

However, if we have a 2nd one, we'd use it again- but be a lot pushier/ vocal about our care.

Postnatal care was appaling though, and I was so relieved when I finally (after 5 days) managed to get out.

The following official website will help you make your decision - it has all the stats:

www.drfosterhealth.co.uk/

I dont know how far you are from UCH but I found it generally very good as did many of my friends.

hi, i'm on my third pregnancy, and about to deliver at the RLH.[turned away from Barkantine Centre - have you looked into that?]

IMO much of your experience - in fact I'd say about 90% of it - will depend on who happens to be on duty wherever you end up.

I had HB with dd1; MWs who attended at home were incompetent which meant that even tho I delivered at home i had to be transferred to RLH anyway. I had 2nd deg tearing which really could've been avoided, with better advice from MW. At hospital postnatal care non-existent. Staff were rude about the fact that I delivered at home and were offering ridiculous advice re bf. Also took ages to be discharged.

With DD2 tried to get into Homerton; was told wouldn't work; ended up at RLH. Labour went really well - it only lasted 3.5 hrs anyway... Fantastic MW; we were discharged early the next morning after insisting all the way from the start on a 6 hour discharge.