Private Birth and Home Visitors

[9DonkeysAndABoy]

Hello all who are going private for the birth. I think that if you give birth on the NHS you get home visitors coming over after the birth (like a midwife type person). Am I correct? Do you know what happens if you go private?

you will still be under the care of the community midwives once you are at home i would imagine, so should get visits from them

are you having ante-natal checks with your local midwives or is that private too?

If you're having an Independent Midwife then your health visitors will take over once she has finished with you. I would imagine it is the same for a private birth too, but check it out with your midwives.

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for the answers.

This, I am still having checks with the midwifes as I only recently finally decided to go private. So I am planning to tell them at the next appointment that I will be private. They are the community midwives, so I assume that they would be the same ones visiting me at home, but I don't know if they'll still want to do that after I have not given birth with them! But I suppose why not. Same as if I went to the consultant lead unit, rather than a birth centre.

CJayne, that makes sense, I guess I will just check with them.

The community team Should treat you the same as an NHS birth and in my experience they certainly try to. However because if you've gone private there aren't the usual systems in place that are there if you're discharged from your local NHS place you need to stay on top of that referral process and get names and mobile numbers BEFORE you give birth.

"Want"! WTF! they have the same duty of care to you, whether you give birth in your local hospital, at home, a private institution or a yurt on the side of a foggy hill! Don't let anyone treat you like they're doing you a favour! That's their job, which your taxes pays for, and you saved the NHS a bit of money by not using their resources and going privately! V best of luck!

Yes, health visitors should definitely come round, though you might have to be proactive. Ours didn't receive the fax from the hospital. DH spent hours on the phone and when they realised I'd fallen through the cracks they came immediately!

In my bumph from The Portland, it says something along the lines of being discharged into the care of the NHS health visitors once at home. I was wondering the same thing as you though 9Donkeys.

I had 2 DCs privately, and when hospital discharged me they passed on all my details to the local community midwives. Community midwife got in touch with me, came to visit, and then discharged me to the local health visitor, who also came to visit. All the same systems are there in place as when you give birth on the NHS, so no need to get all the numbers yourself before birth.

Pinkpeony that's how it's MEANT to work but sadly in some areas there isn't the right referral pathway for private births. First time, everything worked ok, Portland sorted it all. Second time the system had changed which meant there was no one to cover me as I'd given birth out of area, and I had to get the oncall GP out to take my stitches out as I hadn't seen a midwife and they were infected. GP refused as she didn't carry stitch cutters and played hell with community team till it was sorted.

Oh, just saw all the replies. Thank you that is very informative! I will talk to my community midwife next time I see her and will enquire with my hospital (which is an NHS hospital after all, just not the one closest to me). And thanks for the pep talk BoH!