London Hospitals - Queen Charlotte's vs Chelsea & Westminster - 1st timer

[SquealyB]

Hi all

This is my first pregnancy so very excited about it all at the moment but also have NO previous experience and NO London based friends who have had a baby.

We have been asked to choose between Queen Charlotte's hospital (Hammersmith) and Chelsea & Westminster. There is so much mixed feedback about both on the internet and some quite out of date posts so I was hoping that there might be some mums/mums to be on here with some more recent experience of either hospital.

I full accept that each persons experience is obviously down to what happens on the day and very individual. This is much harder than choosing where to go on holiday when you can just ignore some of the bad reviews on TripAdvisor ;)

I am under chelsea and westminster hospital and they're fantastic, the care is excellent. I have had complications since week 22 cannot fault them (except a few dodgy cannula resites!)

The community midwives could be a little more concerned imho but still rate them.

Thanks Poppy - glad to hear everything is going well with you at C&W. Great to get some recent feedback. Fingers crossed for the complications - when are you due?

I had mine through Queen Charlottes (1 at birth centre, 1 at home with qcch midwife).

Care was excellent - it deals with a lot of difficult pregnancies so if you have any complications at all it would be a good place to be.

That said, waiting times for the appointments were daft, got better in later stages when if all going well you see GP for most checkups. Parkings is also awful if that's a factor, although suspect not much different at c and w.

Shallow point - if you stay in chelsea has much better nice cafes for your DP to go to, qcch has...wormwood scrubs next door.

I was very happy with it though!

Thanks BobbieSox - the birthing centre at QC looks very impressive.

Food is never a shallow point with me (more is the pity )

We will weigh up our options and try to make a decision.