Choosing which hospital

[Cheffie100]

Just wondered if anyone could give any advice on how you decided on which hospital.

I'm guessing you can't get a tour of all the ones in your area?!

Other than talking to friends I just wondered where everyone went to for information.

Thanks in advance

We have 2 hospital both have a full maternity department. Ones in the city center and has terrible parking facilities so I choose the other.

I had a choice of 2. One is the main hospital for the area that deals with all the acute cases that the smaller hospitals aren't so well equipped for. It has a fantastic reputation but I know from experience of visiting friend who have had babies there that the maternity wing is old and wards are cramped and always felt rather chaotic to me. Also, to get to it means having cross to the other side of the city which could be difficult at peak traffic times.

The other hospital is closer geographically and on a route less lijely to have severe traffic congestion (and easifiancé me to attend appointments by bus when necessary). It has a newly built maternity wing with a MLU and CLU under the same roof. It actively encourages active birth and has several rooms set up with birthing pools and other equipment to facilitate active birth. It also has a high proportion of private rooms on the post natal ward so most women get one. It was lovely to have my own ensuite afterwards and to be able to close the door for some privacy while trying to establish bf. It was very comfortable and I was slightly miffed to be turfed out just 24 hours after birth. I think I'd have been more keen to go home if I had been on a shared ward.

Many hospitals don't offer tours anymore because of infection risk but the one I chose has a DVD virtual tour which shows and explains the facilities in great detail.

I had three to choose from so just googled for some reviews. One seemed to consistently get bad reviews for post-natal care, the other two seemed better, so I've just gone for the closest of those two.

Watch out that the reviews aren't too old though.

Good luck!

Opt for the nearest, as all have pros and cons, but if you or the baby has to stay in it will be much easier to manage visits if you don't have far too travel.

Due to living in the arse-end of nowhere, I had a choice of 5 hospitals and a birthing centre.

I'm considered high risk, so the birthing centre was immediately off the cards. One of the hospitals has a very bad reputation locally, so I discounted that one. Another one was only about 20 miles away, but an absolute nightmare to get to with minimal car-parking facilities, so I discounted that one.

That left me with 3, with no real differences in opinions from other people/reviews etc. I ended up picking the one in the city that DH works in. I figured I'd have lots of ante-natal appointments and scans, but whereas I would get the time off work for them, DH wouldn't. So if I went with a hospital nearer his work he'd be able to come too. Plus I figured it'd be easier for him to get to if I went into labour while he was at work.

As it happened, I had an awful experience there, they made mistakes and the care was shoddy at best.

So I'm now pregnant with DC2 and have picked one of the remaining 2. Due to my pre-existing health conditions and the circumstances around DC1's birth, I know there's quite a high chance this baby will need to go to either NICU or SCBU. So I picked the remaining hospital that had the biggest NICU, reasoning they probably had doctors with more experience of a wider range of problems, and hopefully as they're bigger there's less chance of me being carted off to a different hospital as their NICU is full.

Am now 36 weeks, and so far so good. I've had a few admissions so far and the care has been wonderful, infinitely better than the last hospital.

It's a nightmare trying to pick though, isn't it? I think most hospitals have virtual tours on their websites, and if you use the NHS Choices website (I think it's called that), you can compare different hospitals stats on numerous things I.e. 1-1 midwives, CS rates etc. Do be aware of what the stats are actually telling you though - I.e. the hospital I'm with now has a pretty high CS rate, but I think that's because it's a large university hospital and therefore gets more high-risk and complicated cases anyway.